National Hockey Championship preparations finalised

KARACHI: Punjab sports minister Jehangir Khanzada will inaugurate 63rd National Hockey Championship, scheduled to be held in Lahore form December 23 to January 3, 2017.

A total of 14 departments will participate in the event. All preparations of the championship are being given final shape, PHF informed ‘The News’ on Tuesday. PHF officials are hopeful that before the championship PHF would be able to get sponsorship from a big corporate entity, as talks are going on with a few organisations.

Sources said that prize money of the championship would be decided when PHF got sponsorship. The opening ceremony of the championship will be held at National Hockey Stadium. The matches will also be played at Johar Town stadium.

PHF sources said that due to fog in Lahore, it would be difficult to organise matches under floodlights but if weather permitted, the final might be held under floodlights at National Hockey Stadium.

It may be noted that PHF has already appointed Olympian Musaddiq Hussain as Tournament Director (TD). PHF’s director development domestic Olympian Naveed Alam said a meeting about the national championship would be held on Thursday (tomorrow) which would be addressed by Musaddiq.

Only departments will participate in the championship, a step PHF says will boost the standard of domestic hockey.

Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM), Pakistan Ordnance Factory and Fauji Foundation have confirmed that they would participate in the championship. Assistant directors are Ansar Mehmood (Gujrat), Khalid Munir (Karachi) and Shahid Hameed (Gujranwala).

Masood-ur-Rehman will be the organising secretary.Zulfiqar Shah (Lahore) will be the umpires’ manager. Munawar Hussain (Lahore), M Asghar (TUF) and Ms Razia Rizvi (Rawalpindi) will be the assistant managers.

As many as 32 technical officials and 23 umpires from across the country have been selected to conduct the championship.The departments likely to participate in the championship are Army, Navy, Air Force, WAPDA, SSGC, Customs, NBP, PTV, SNGPL and Police. The national selection committee members will witness the matches to find players for the national team.