Jat protest strikes the All-India Inter-university baseball tournament

The ongoing Jat protests in Haryana has increased its list of casualties, this time, it is the All-India Inter-university men’s and women’s baseball tournament. The tournament hosted by the Panjab University (PU) is slated to be held from February 21 to 26.

But with the entire state is in the grip of violent protests, many teams which were scheduled to arrive from all over the country are stuck in Delhi with no mode of transport.

The tournament did start on scheduled time

Despite, this circumstance the tournament got start with very few participants. Only two matches were played on the opening day. In the men’s section, Solapur University defeated RTM University, Nagpur 14-2 and also did the same in the women’s section 14-1.

PU director of sports Parminder Singh confirmed the developments and said he had received many calls throughout the day and had suggested alternative routes to the teams to PU.

He said, “I have received numerous calls from teams stuck in Delhi and have asked the teams to come via Meerut-Saharanpur road which is still open. Although the tournament has started, we have not penalised any team today. We know the situation and thus did not give any team a walkover today. We will wait for them till tomorrow afternoon and then decide on the next course of action,”

Many teams are on their way and Pu will conduct the tournament

Singh also said that although many teams have already arrived for the tournament, more are still on the way and can reach Chandigarh by Monday evening.

He confidently said, “We will accommodate them. We only conducted matches today for the team which had arrived. The team from Lucknow University managed to arrive today afternoon and similarly many are en route,”

He further said that PU also had sent there three teams via Saharanpur-Meerut road to assist the teams and by evening the teams had managed to cross over to Uttar Pradesh without any trouble.

“We have also opted for this alternative route. We had kho-kho team which is slated to play in Noida, while hockey team is slated to play in Delhi. The women’s handball team has also reached Varanasi. I received a call from the team manager in the evening and all the teams have crossed over to UP without any hitch and are on their way to Delhi,” added Parminder.