Hyderabad: India may bid for next year’s Asia Cup hockey tournament, but a final decision will be taken at the twoday ad-hoc committee meeting with the hockey Olympians here on Sunday to chart out the roadmap for Indian hockey. “We are meeting the Olympians and we will discuss with them the action plan for Indian hockey . The Asia Cup will also be discussed at that meeting,” Kalmadi said.
The Asia Cup venue will be decided at the executive council meeting of the Asian Hock ey Federation (AHC) here on Thursday. Others in the race are Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), AHF secretary general P. Alagendra said. The tournament is also an Asian qualifying event for the 2010 World Cup finals, which will also be held in India. “We have received all the bid documents. The AHF competitions committee has made its recommendation to the council for a decision,” Alagendra said.
The council will also take a decision whether to increase the number of teams for the tournament from eight to 10.
Currently, the qualifiers are the top six from the previous tournament (India, Pakistan, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and China) and the top two from the AHF Cup (Bangladesh and Oman). IANS