Silver Jubilee Servo Surjit Hockey to begin from Oct 18

Jalandhar, Oct 14: Three Pakistan teams will be the main attraction in the Indian Oil Servo Surjit Silver Jubilee Hockey Tournament, scheduled to be held here from October 18 to 25.

The Deputy Commissioner, Jalandhar Ajeet Singh Pannu, who is also the President of the Surjit Hockey Society, said the tournament was organised every year by Society to keep the name of Sardar Surjit Singh Randhawa, ex-Olympian alive.

Randhawa lost his life in a fatal car accident near Jalandhar on January 7, 1984.

The Commissioner revealed that the Silver Jubilee edition of the tournament would be played on league-cum-knockout basis. All the matches of the tournament would be played under floodlights and no gate entry money would be charged to the spectators who would come to witness the matches.

As in the past, this year also, Asia’s largest and leading Oil company IndianOil Corporation Limited would be the main sponsor of the tournament while multinational gym company Gold’s Gym would be the co-sponsor for the tournament, Pannu said.

The tournament organising committee has decided to increase the cash prize money to Rs 2.25 lakh instead of Rs one lakh while the runner up team would pocket Rs one lakh instead of Rs 60,000, Pannu said adding that the best player of the tournament would get Mohinder Singh Tut Memorial Award along with the cash prize Rs 25,000.

According to Iqbal Singh Sandhu, Organising Secretary of tournament three Pakistan teams namely Javed Hockey Club, Gojra, Crescent Hockey Club, Sialkot and Independent Hockey Club, Sargodha have confirmed their participation in the tournament.

All the three Pakistan teams, recommended by the Pakistan Hockey Federation, have been seeded directly in to quarterfinal league stage, Sandhu said adding that last year Runners up and star studded Indian Air lines, Delhi would now participate under the banner of Air India, Mumbai.

The other Indian teams include last year’s Champion IndianOil Mumbai, Punjab and Sind Bank Delhi, Namdhari-XI Sirsa, Border Security Force Jalandhar, Air India Mumbai, Rail Coach Factory Kapurthala, Bharat Petroleum Mumbai, Punjab Police Jalandhar and South Central Railways Secundrabad.

The Adhoc Committee of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) has appointed K.N. Sharma (Delhi) as IHF Observer, Shakeel Qureshi (Bhopal) as Grade-I umpire as Director of the Tournament, Harbans Singh, International Grade-I Umpire (Faridkot) as Umpire’s Manager while Virender Bahadur Singh (Air India, Lucknow) Suresh Bhatia & Bhupinder Singh (Both from P&SB), Navtej Singh and Ripudaman Sharma (Both Punjab Police), Paramjit Singh Lopo (Moga) and H S Sangha (Jalandhar) as umpire for this grade-I hockey Tournament of the country, Pannu added. UNI