The Middle Asia qualifying tournament may look a pointless exercise, as India is an undisputed SAARC super-power in basketball, but every point counts in a match, at any level, or so we believe.
However, the scorers for the first match of the day did not look to have recovered from the arduous exercise during the National junior championship that had concluded on Tuesday. For they credited a point scored by Nepal to Bhutan, though the player they credited the point to — Dorji Tshering (No. 15) — did not even take the court!
It was not a lightning strike that the scorers had got mixed up, but a simple free throw, after the player had missed the first. So, instead of putting the score as 55-28 for Nepal, they put it as 29-54 for Bhutan. The other set of officials handling the statistics separately for the match, with the help of a computer, did not credit Bhutan's No.15 but mentioned correctly that Nepal's No.15, Paresh Shreshtha, had converted one of four free-throws.
The statisticians also blotted their record by crediting an extra point to No. 10 of Bhutan and though the final score was 80-52, it became 79-53 for Nepal, in both the records.
