NEW DELHI: The Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) on Thursday announced the list of 36 probable for the Pre-Olympic Qualification tournament at Auckland from October 12 to 27.
Veteran Pargat Singh and Jude Felix both of whom missed the Indira Gandhi International Gold Cup Tournament are among those whose names figure in the list.
The first four teams of the Pre-Olympic tournament shall play in the Barcelona games in June next year. This is the first time that the International Hockey Federation (FIH) is conducting such a tournament.
In the revised Olympic qualification format the automatic entries the reigning Olympic champions Great Britain hosts Spain and World Cup winners Holland. In the past the first six teams of the previous Olympics had automatic entries. India had finished sixth in the Seoul Olympics.
Pakistan by virtue of winning the title in the Beijing Asian Games has also qualified for the main tournament. The winner of the European Cup shall be decided at Paris in June. The Pan-American Games All African Games and the Oceania Zone winners also pay at Barcelona.
The first coaching camp for the 36 Indian probable shall be held at the Shivaji Stadium in Delhi from March 4 to April 6 under the super-vision of the new chief national coach Balkishen Singh.
There will be a break till April 20 during which the IHF will conduct the first Federation Cup on Astroturf at Lucknow. Thereafter an Indian team will leave for a five-nation European Tour from May 1 to 30. The team will play 15 matches during the period at Germany Holland Belgium France and England.
Following is the list of the probable: Mark Patterson John Fernandes Dhanraj Pillai and Darrgl D’Souza (Bombay) Pargat Singh Jagdev Singh Vivek Singh Nirmal Singh R.P.Singh G Khandekar and Jude Felix (Railways) A.BSubbaiah Ashish Ballal Harinder Singh Mohammed Arif Shakeel Ahmed Sanjay Bisht Jagbir Singh Mukesh Kumar and atif Idris (Indian Airlines) Ajit Lakra (Services) N.Nag (Bengal) A. Edwards Mur Mur A. Bulung Gundeep Kumar Sanjiv Kumar and Ram Saran (Punjab) Rohit Chauhan Z. Rehman and Mohammed Nisar (Uttar Pradesh) Manjit-Singh (Patiala) Poonacha (Karnataka) Baljit Singh and Harjit Singh (Chandigarh) and Harpreet Singh (Universities).
Article extracted from this publication >> March 15, 1991
