HIL 2014 – The curtain raiser

Vijay Anand

This year’s HIL second edition is going on. The winner will get heavy amount of 2.5 crore rupees. Runner up will get half of it and 3^rd place team will get 75 lacks. Best players of the tournament will purse 25 lacks, top scorer 10 lacks and best young talent 20 lacks rupees in his pocket. After each match, MOM will receive cheque of 25000 rupees.

This edition will feature 6 franchisees from 6 cities. Let’s have a look at all of them.

Punjab Warriors is the best squad. The team is led by 3 time World Hockey player of the year, Jamie Dwayer. Team is full of Australian players. Christopher Ciriello, Mark Knowles, Simon Orchard and Rob Hammond are the other Aussies in the team. Coach Barry Dancer will find it easy to get the best out of these players. Advisor Jagbir Singh will be the hidden weapon of the team. Tall Dutch Jaap Stockman will be under the bar. PC specialist Sandeep Singh (top scorer with 11 goals in the previous edition) will try to impress the national selectors for the World Cup.

Winner Ranchi Rhinos will be without the services of their captain Moritz Fuerste for the first two matches. English talent Ashley Jackson and Barry Middleton are other foreign stars in the team. GK Francisco Cortes of ESP has a lot of experience. Three best Indian players Mandeep-Manpret and Kothajit are also there. National junior team coach Gregg Clark will surely be looking for the title. The final, SFs and 3^rd place playoff will be played on the smallest stadium of the edition. It will be a major booster for the team.

 

Delhi Waveriders has paid highest money for an Indian player, Sardara Singh. As captain, he has pocketed $78000. Cedric D’souza is the only Indian coach in all the franchisees. In 2013 they were the runner up. This year, advisor Ajit Pal Singh is very optimistic for the trophy. Other star players will be Nicolas Jacobi (GER) as the Goal Keeper, Simon Child and Stevan Edwards (both from New zealand) in the forward line. Rupinder Pal Singh will be the drag flicker of the team. Danish Mujtaba, Akashdeeep and Yuvraj Walmiki are the other big purchase of the owners.

Uttar Pradesh Wizard is owned by Sahara Group. Rolent Oltmans is the main coach and Dhanraj Pillai is assisting him as Technical Director. Team has a lot of foreign players in key positions. Tech De Nooijier (NED, FOR), David Alegre (ESP, MF), Luke Doerner (AUS, DEF) and Kumar Subramanium (MAL, GK) are the examples. V R Raghunath, the captain with 148 international matches experience, will try to convert each PC the team earns. Tushar Khandekar and Luke Doerner will try to prove that they are not spent force.

Mumbai Magicians could win only 1 match in the previous editon. Main reason of the downfall was the plight of PAK players due to political controversy, upon whom the team was heavily dependent. Owners Dabur group had kept faith on Ric Charlsworth. Best Indian GK Sreejesh, Drag flicker Gurjinder are the best Indian purchase. Adam Dixon and Trent Mitton will attack upfront. In the Mid field they have hugely experienced 2 Australians, Glen Turner and Matthew Butturini. The team is balanced and is ready to prove their true place in the table.

Kalinga Lancers are the new kid on the block. The team has appointed a CEO for the improvement. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will personally supervise the proceedings. He is willing to place Odisa on the World Hockey map and it could be his launch pad. Team will play home matches in relatively small stadium with capacity of 6000 people at Bhubaneswar. Lukas Villa (ARG), Russell Ford (AUS) and Ryan Archibald (NZL) will be the main puller of Kalinga rath. Terry Walsh as main coach and crowd favourite Dilip Tirkey as his advisor will provide the traction for relatively young squad.

Due to World Cup in May-June this year, many top players have opted out of this edition. German coach Markus Weiss, Dutch coach Paul van Ass have openly shown their reluctance in releasing the players. 24 Aussies are playing in the league. On the other hand no player from Belgium and Korea are here. Pakistani players are not playing due to off the field reasons. But there is a big hope. All love the concept and vowed to send full contingent of players in next edition. So this time- ‘Chak de’.