Dhangadhi, February 22

Mahendranagar United advanced to the final of the third Ruslan Dhangadhi Premier League after Kathmandu Goldens boycotted the second qualifier here at the proposed Fapla International Stadium today.

Goldens did not report to the ground on time and the team also failed to turn up for the toss before the organisers declared United the winners of the match. United will now face CYC Attariya in Saturday’s final.

According to Goldens team manager Sanjay Shrestha, the team decided to boycott the match after the technical committee banned Indian recruit Ankit Dabas from bowling for suspected illegal action. “The technical committee is biased towards us and we are not obliged to accept the decision,” said Shrestha. “This is franchise cricket and no one can force us to play.”

The Technical Committee had on Thursday said that “the player of Kathmandu Goldens, Ankit Dabas has been reported twice by the on-field umpires in two different games of Kathmandu Goldens for his suspected illegal bowling action in ongoing Ruslan DPL-3, 2019. After having video analysis by the tournament technical committee, his bowling arm action is found illegal and will not be allowed to bowl in further matches.”

Furious with the decision of the technical committee, the Goldens management complained with the organisers. “The organisers had assured us of coming up with proper solution by this morning. But we did not get any message from then and we did our decision of not playing in the tournament,” said Goldens team manager Shrestha.

Technical committee chairman Buddhi Pradhan rubbished the claims of Goldens. “We reached to the decision after analysing the bowling of the player. We had written to the Goldens about his action after Dabas was reported for the first time but we came to know that the player was not informed about incident,” said Pradhan, the ICC Elite Panel umpire.