Tennis bodies concerned over substandard umpiring, overage players

KARACHI: The provincial tennis bodies have asked the national federation to do age verification of junior players and raise the standard of umpiring.

It has been learnt that in the latest Annual General Meeting of Pakistan Tennis Federation, the representatives of Punjab and Sindh brought up the issue of age verification of the junior players in the national circuit.

According to the minutes of the meeting, the representatives informed the President PTF about an overage menace that has been hurting the national junior circuit.

The president PTF then directed to form a committee to look into this issue.

It is worth adding here that the federation has been unable to deal with the issue of overage junior players despite issuing strict advisories regarding participation according to their age categories.

Ahmad Ijaz Yousuf, Joint Secretary of Balochistan Tennis Association, spoke about the need of improving the standard of umpiring at events in the national circuit.

He added that national tennis events are being officiated by players or non-certified umpires, destroying the national circuit.

This was also admitted by PTF’s head of officiating Shahzad Alvi as he said that in spite of several advisories from PTF this practice is affecting the quality of umpiring in the country.

“Some events organised by provincial associations had been using non-certified players/others as umpires which naturally affected the quality of umpiring,” said Alvi.

He added that this was however never allowed at PTF Complex and regular officiating courses and training sessions were being conducted for improvement in this regard.

It is pertinent to mention here that PTF had introduced a Yellow Badge course in the officiating sometime back in Pakistan as a pre-ITF level course.

After completing this course, candidates have to progress to ITF Level-1 in order to become an official international referee.

But there is very little progress in this regard as local umpires do not actively go for ITF Level-1 courses after completing Yellow Badge Course.

Therefore PTF is facing a shortage of international referees as well.

Shehzad Alvi, who is a white badge referee, while speaking at a 2-day ITF Officiating Workshop in Karachi told ‘The News’ that PTF had selected two referees from Lahore and they were to be sent to any regional country in 2021 to become ITF Level-1 referees.

But no progress in this regard has been made by PTF since this announcement despite the country not having many international level referees.

Alvi also shared reasons behind that issue Pakistan has been facing since long.

"Financial constraints are a reason behind this low interest in officiating,” he reasoned.

He added that an international referee needs to officiate 25 matches at international level in a year, which is very difficult for many local referees to afford.