A semifinal of the Harris Shield tournament has been postponed till further notice because of the haphazardness of the MSSA.
MUMBAI: In one of the most bizarre incidents, a semifinal match of the Harris Shield elite division inter-school cricket tournament has been postponed till further notice because of the haphazardness of the Mumbai School Sports Association (MSSA).
The five players — Sayed Alam Dar Hussain, Asgar Ali, Ilyas Maldar, Wajid Ali and Mohammad Zaid, of the Anjuman-I-Islam (Urdu) High School, Fort — were supposed to undertake a bone test after Hansraj Morarji Public School filed a protest last week alleging they were overaged. The bone test wasn’t done because the MSSA failed to send an official letter to the Fort school regarding the same.
The winner, which would have been decided following the results of the test, was supposed to play Anjuman-I-Islam (English) High School in the semifinals starting Tuesday.
The other semifinal will be played between Springfield Rizvi High School and Shardashram Vidyamandir (English) according to the schedule on Tuesday at Matunga.
Incidentally, Rizvi’s qualification was also under doubt after Yashodham High School (Goregaon) did not turn up for their last league match on the second day.
“We were not even given an official notification regarding where should we get the players and what time. Our principal was called in the morning saying that the players would be required right away for the test,” said Farid Shaikh, sports director of Anjuman-I-Islam High School.
“I called them half an hour later because I had to look for the players since I was given a very short notice. I was then told that the MSSA officials had already left the place and the doctor was busy,” he added. The Fort school later sent a letter to the association stating the above concerns.
Apparently, the MSSA officials had not even checked the original birth certificate of the concerned players when they visited the school. Now, the association has decided to send a letter in order to check the birth certificate of the players.
When DNA contacted MSSA cricket secretary HS Bhor, he said: “It is true that we did not send an official letter. We had discussed it verbally. But now that we have received a letter from them (Anjuman-I-Islam), we will now go by the procedures. The committee will discuss the issue at a meeting on Tuesday evening.”
Shaikh further added that it was on Saturday decided that only two of the five players will be tested. When Bhor was asked about the same, he asked MSSA general secretary Esmero Figueiredo to answer the same. Figueiredo said, “Since we had to get started with the test, we had agreed to test only two people. But later we would have asked for the remaining three players as well.” Following Monday’s developments, the MSSA will have to redo the past four day’s work in order to ascertain a semifinalist, sending the match schedule into a tizzy.
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