CHENNAI: The ongoing Hockey A-Division League Championships has seemingly befriended Harry Houdini over the last couple of weeks. One of the premier competitions in the sport at the state level, the latest edition has already been delayed twice. The latest delay happened on Thursday. At 3.00 pm, when Homely Hockey was supposed to start their Group B match against Ashok Leyland, there were no players inside the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium. They had all left for Tiruchy to take part in the inter-district championships which began on Wednesday.
This much was confirmed by Thirumal Valavan, a joint-secretary with the Chennai Hockey Association (CHA), the organisers of the A Division meet. “We have completed around 70 per cent of the league matches and have only a few left for the quarterfinals of the Chennai league championships,” he told The New Indian Express.
“The Tiruchy tournament was announced in March and so we were prepared to postpone the matches for a break that corresponded with the championship in Tiruchy. It’s only a few days.” No response was forthcoming when asked why the meet was scheduled to run concurrently with the district competition. A four-day event, the latter has 27 districts participating and is being overseen by the Hockey Unit of Tamil Nadu.
The A-Division tournament began last month but was initially halted for a few days because of a three-day workshop by Jude Felix, ex-coach of the Indian junior men’s hockey team. Even though the organisers hope to reschedule the remaining fixtures from Monday onwards, no new dates have been announced as yet. “We are all in Tiruchy now,” a source in the know said. “The event in Tiruchy finishes Sunday evening and we will be back in Chennai only Monday. Only after that can we finalise the dates for the remaining matches.”
There could be a further delay, as state-level hockey tournament is scheduled to be held in the city in the third week of December. With the same players expected to feature in that as well, CHA might be looking at a January finish for the league that was originally supposed to finish in November.