"Aasif Manzoor, a 32-year-old cricketer from Anantnag, a district in the south of Indian-administered Kashmir, was readying himself on Saturday morning to play a match in a star-studded tournament. Retired global stars, local cricket icons and up-and-coming players were all part of the Indian Heaven Premier League (IHPL), which organisers had billed as a spectacle that they promised would grip the troubled region and draw large crowds."
"The staff was refusing to let us check out, Manzoor told Al Jazeera. The reason? The organisers had vanished the night before, allegedly after running out of money midway through the tournament. As the hotel bills mounted and ran into millions of rupees, dozens of players like Manzoor found themselves trapped. Scoring runs and taking wickets wasn't on their minds any more. Getting out of the hotel was."
"The embarrassing debacle has raised questions about the event's planning and the role of the region's administrators. But to many, the episode is also the latest example of the pitfalls of attempts by the Indian government and corporate entities backed by it to portray a sense of normalcy in Kashmir, six years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government scrapped the region's semiautonomous special status."
A high-profile Indian Heaven Premier League (IHPL) cricket tournament in Srinagar featured retired global stars, local icons and emerging players. Organisers from the Yuva Society arranged hotel bookings at the Radisson overlooking the Jhelum River. Organisers allegedly vanished overnight after running out of funds, prompting hotel staff to block check-outs as bills mounted into millions of rupees and leaving dozens of players temporarily trapped. The remainder of the tournament was canceled. The incident prompted questions about event planning and administrators, and reinforced concerns about portrayals of normalcy in Kashmir since revocation of its special status.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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