Haryana disqualified for fielding over-age players

Satya Rath

MUMBAI: Indian hockey’s ‘age-old’ problem raised its ugly head yet again on Monday when Haryana team was disqualified from the ongoing Junior National hockey championship for fielding as many as 10 over-age players.

The organisers of the under-17 event, Mumbai Hockey Association, asked all 16 members of the Haryana team to undergo a medical test after Bhopal lodged an official protest on Saturday last, soon after suffering a 1-9 drubbing. In their first match, Haryana had decimated Kerala by a 13-1 margin.

MHA secretary Gurbux Singh said both results of Haryana had been scrapped. “The team has been disqualified and their results have been scrapped. We had declared before the tournament that we will be very strict on age-cheats. Though it (medical test) is a costly affair, we have no option when such things happen,” the Olympian said.

Haryana team officials were not available for comment. The team was supposed to play Hyderabad in a Pool B match on Monday, which was cancelled after results of the medical tests confirmed that 10 players from the 16-member team were definitely above 17 years of age.

Meanwhile, Bhopal and Rajasthan made it to the quarterfinal round. While Bhopal beat Kerala 4-2 to top the pool with six points, the match between Patiala and Puducherry ended 12-2 in favour of the former, thereby paving the way for Rajasthan to qualify for the round of eight. Patiala needed to win by a 16-goal margin to make it to quarters. In other matches, Chattisgarh, who have already made it to the quarters, rallied superbly to beat Goa 5-2, who were leading 2-0 for the better part of the first half. In the last match of the day, Andhra beat Maharashtra 6-5, with Bhagat Babu scoring the winning goal just seconds before the long hooter.

Results: Bhopal 4 (Shahnawaz Khan, Nadeem Uddin 2, Shahbaz Uddin) bt Kerala 2 (Sarabin S, Sreekumar MB); Patiala 12 (Ripudaman Singh Toor 2, Kulbir Singh 2, Pushpinder Pal Singh 4, Shaminder Singh 3, Jaspinder Singh) bt Puducherry 2 (John Bosco 2); Chattisgarh 5 (Rahul Rajak 3, Raja Khan, Sumit Patle) bt Goa 2 (Noor Chowdhary, Raju Motilal Rathod); Andhra 6 (V Sri Ranga, B Arvind, B Charan Kumar 2, B Yerri Swamy, JA Bhagat Babu) bt Maharashtra 5 (Abhijit Thanekar 2, Shashi Biranje, Venkatesh Pillay, Vijay Kakare); Tuesday: Rest day