Squash players’ overage issue reappears

KARACHI: The issue of overage players in Pakistan squash reappeared when the organisers of the Rehana Nazar Rashidabad National Junior Squash Championship debarred a few players from playing in certain age categories.

The event begins from January 21.

The organisers moved Saad Abdullah from the main round of under-19 category to reserve list, considering him overage for the category.

Since this event has only main rounds, the reserve players will not get to play until some main round players withdraw.

Interestingly, the national rankings issued by Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) on the first of this month have Saad in the under-19 category.

Saad was moved into under-19 category by PSF from under-17 in July 2015, but according to the recent rankings of PSF he is still number three in under-17 category.  

Sikander Khan has been placed in the main round of under-19 category by the organizers of this event. It was reported by this scribe in March 2015 that PSF stopped Sikander and six other players from playing in under-19 category in the SNGPL Championship in Lahore for being overage.

The most interesting case is of Rafi Khan, who was put in the under-15 category by PSF in January 2017, but the organisers of Rashidabad event placed him in the under-17 category in reserve list considering him overage for the under-15 category. So he moved into the under-17 category without playing under-15 events.

Similarly, Kabeer Alam and Osama Zafar have been moved into under-19 category by the organisers though they are ranked 17th and 27th, respectively, by PSF in under-17 category.

“The organisers told Sikander Khan that this is his last chance to play in the under-19 category,” a source told ‘The News’.

The source added that Rafi played in the under-15 category in Peshawar last year. Mehboob Khan protested over his participation in that category but the matter was hushed up by the organisers. When contacted, secretary of parallel Sindh Squash Association (SSA) Rashid Ahmad said he aligned the entries as per the documents of the players. “PSF will soon conduct age scrutiny of players and their representatives will come here to do the needful.

“For now, we have only aligned a few players’ age for this Rashidabad event according to their official documents,” said Rashid.

The source said that the organisers had to do this because of a strong protest by the mother of a female player in DG Rangers national event held last month in Karachi.

“The mother of a player protested strongly against participation of ‘overage players’ in DG Rangers championship,” said the source.

When asked, PSF secretary Amir Nawaz said that the organisers of events had the right to take on-spot decisions about players’ age. A few years back PSF conducted age scrutiny of all players registered with it but never made the results of the scrutiny public.