‘$15,000 squash event was waste of money’

KARACHI: The country’s squash authorities have once again been criticised for allowing 11th DG Rangers Open Squash Championship offering $15,000 prize money.

“This is a highly irrational decision to hold a satellite event offering prize money of $15,000,” said Sindh Squash Association (SSA) secretary Mohammad Amir Khan. “They should have organised three or four satellite events with this much prize money,” he added.

He said that $15,000 was not a small amount, so holding a satellite event with this much money was a waste of resources. It would not benefit the national squash circuit and players, he argued.

“The local players in this event won’t get enough points to rise in international rankings. It also restrains foreign participation, hence lack of competition for local players,” reasoned Amir.He said that it was unfortunate that Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) was ignoring such poor decisions.

The organisers had stated: “It is further informed that the tournament has been registered with PSA as Closed Satellite Event. Participating players (PSA members) will have to forward an email to PSA on 30 December 2017 for inclusion of points in their world ranking.”

When contacted, PSF secretary Tahir Sultan said that PSA did not allow holding PSA-15 event. “So we decided to have a satellite event with this prize money for the benefit of local players,” he said.

A local coach said that the DG Rangers event was also converted from junior to senior category which was a big loss to the junior players of Sindh since only one or two junior events were held in the province in a year.

The coach added that now only Rashidabad junior event was left in the calendar for Sindh’s players, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa holds junior events almost every month to provide non-stop competition to the local players.

He said that it was damaging Sindh’s squash and making the junior players of the province get poor national rankings, which affected their participation in international events since PSF preferred sending top-ranked players abroad.