Stage set for youngsters

By Vivek Phadnis

The second edition of the Hockey India Senior National Men’s Championship is all set to begin here on Sunday. The buzz around the championship may not be so big this time due to the situation the sport finds itself in the country today.

The event, nevertheless, is going to see 31 states and five institutional teams battling it out over 10 days for the title. The national selectors and government observers will be witnessing the matches, which will be held at the Hockey Stadium and Madras Engineer Group turfs, and it gives a good chance for many youngsters to show his skills. After the depressing show by the Indian team at the London Olympics, the need of the hour, perhaps, is to find fresh players who are raring to go.

Many of the teams in the fray will not really be up to the mark. The teams have been divided into eight pools. While the first four have five teams each, the last four have four teams each. The group-toppers will advance to the knockout quarterfinal stage.

The serious title contenders are expected to be defending champions Haryana, last year’s runners-up Karnataka, Air India, Services, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Hockey Bhopal and Uttar Pradesh. Haryana will have in their ranks ace Indian midfielder Sardara Singh but Sandeep Singh is not well and will most likely not play. Karnataka will be led by drag-flick specialist VR Raghunath and will have among others Vikramkanth (vice-captain), SK Uthappa and Pundalik Bellary. The other internationals expected to turn out are SV Sunil, Ignace Tirkey (both Services), Sarwanjit Singh (Punjab), Tushar Khandekar (UP), Shivendra Singh (AI), Gurvinder Singh Chandi (Punjab) and PR Sreejesh (TN).

On the opening day, the mouth-watering clashes include Haryana vs Hockey Bhopal (Pool A) and Odisha vs Tamil Nadu (Pool G). Both matches are crucial for the teams and a win is most likely to see the team top the group.

“We have a good team, it is a good mix of experience and youth,” said Karnataka skipper Raghunath. “We want to put up a good show particularly because we are the hosts. We want to do better than last year. We want to take it match by match and we are expecting all teams to put up a good fight. We will give it our 100 per cent and all are playing well,” he added.