Hyderabad: Anything the seniors do, the juniors can do even better! The Gachibowli Stadium turned into a virtual battlefield during the Junior Hockey Asia Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan on Wednesday when players from both sides clashed following a heated argument.

It wasn’t exactly a one-off since the arch rivals had been involved in similar incidents before, one of the instances being during the men’s challenge meet in Sydney in June, 2003.

During that match which saw India advance to the final despite a 4-4 draw, captain Baljit Singh Dhillon received a red card in the 40th minute following an exchange of blows with Pakistan’s Ali Raza.

On Wednesday, however, Pakistan’s Muhammad Irfan roughly tackled Mandeep Antil when the Indian was looking dangerous in the opponent’s D area towards the end of the first session with the hosts leading 1-0.

Irfan allegedly raised his stick against Antil when teammate Gurwinder Singh Chandi took a strong exception to it and a heated argument followed.

It soon descended into a freefor-all when players of both teams rushed to the spot and began pushing each other and exchanging blows.

The match had to be halted for a few minutes. It took intervention from the umpires and other officials to bring the situation under control. The umpires called both the captains — Shafqat Rasool of Pakistan and India’s Gurbaj Singh — to discuss the incident and warned them.

Irfan, who suffered a nose injury during the fracas, was shown a yellow card afterwards.

India coach A.K. Bansal said: “It was unfortunate. Whether it was Pakistan or us, it should not have happened.”