32 teams for HI National Hockey
Thirty-two teams, divided into eight pools, will vie for the title in the inaugural Hockey India Senior National Hockey Championship, to be held at four turfs in Bhopal, from June 10 to 19. The participants include institutional teams Services, Railways, Air-India and Combined Universities. The matches will be held on a league-cum-knockout basis.
The matches will be played on four synthetic turfs at the Aishbagh Stadium, Mayur Park and Sport Authority of India centre. The games will be played under floodlights from the quarter-final stage. Hockey India said here today that the new turf, laid at the MP Hockey Academy at Mayur Park, will be used for the first time.
Shakeel Qureshi has been appointed the tournament director, while the matches will be supervised by FIH World Panel and FIH International Badge holders from India.
Ten matches will be played on the opening day, with Tamil Nadu taking on Uttarakhand in the first. Punjab will meet Gujarat in one of the matches.
The eight pools are: Pool A: Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Uttarakhand; Pool B: Chandigarh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Assam; Pool C: Delhi, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Bengal; Pool D: Air-India, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Chhattisgarh; Pool E: Services, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Manipur; Pool F: Haryana, Maharashtra, Goa and Meghalaya; Pool G: Railways, Combined Universities, Puducherry and Tripura; Pool H: Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Andaman and Nicobar.