New Delhi: Raipur has gone abuzz with Hockey as the capital city of Chhattisgarh welcomed international teams to the city for the year’s biggest global hockey event, the Hero Hockey World League Finals. The tournament is scheduled to be hosted at the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel International Stadium, Raipur from the 27th November – 6th December 2015.
Raipur just hosted the last two of the three match series between India and world champions Australia. This test series marked the city’s first ever exposure to an international tournament and the full stadium for the matches were a testimony to the popularity of the sport of hockey in the region. The city is now all set to host their first international multination tournament as all the participating teams have already arrived in the city. With India and Australia already in town for the last one week, since yesterday the other six teams viz; Germany, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Netherlands and Argentina, have reached Raipur.
Except for Australia and India who have had a rest day after the 3-match series got over yesterday, all the other six teams took out time to practice at the new laid turf at the Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel International stadium. Germany and Canada also played a practice match which was a part of their training schedule. The match was played with a reduced time of three quarters of 15 minutes each. Germany won the match 1-0 with a lone goal scored by Constantine Staib.
NMDC ltd has been roped in as the Principal Partner on ground partner while SECL/CIL and NTPC are the Official Partners for the Hero Hockey World League Final 2015.
