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The inaugural Hero Hockey India League announced the panel of umpires, who will officiate the 34 matches to be held across five venues – Delhi, Jalandhar, Lucknow, Mumbai and Ranchi from January 14 to February 10.
As many as twelve umpires will officiate the inaugural league. The umpires panel will feature eight Indians – Raghu Prasad, Javed Shaikh, Gurinder Sangha, Ripudaman Sharma, Anil Kumar, Suresh Thakur Kumar, Pankaj Tyagi and Harsha Vardhan.
The panel also features the Australian duo of Michael Eilmer and Murray Grime besides Spain’s Marcello Servetto and South Africa’s Gary Simmonds.
Hockey India also announced the technical officials for its much-hyped event. England’s vastly experienced hockey official Barry Anderson will be the Tournament Director for the league.
It may be mentioned here that Anderson had been involved in various major international hockey tournaments from time to time. He had officiated three FIH Champions Trophy, three FIH Champions Challenge and FIH World Cup Qualifying Tournaments.
He will be actively supported by five Assistant Tournament Directors – three of whom are Indians – Claudius De Sale, Muneer Mohammad, Shakeel Qureshi. Scotland’s Ian McKay and England’s Howard Pollard are the other two Assistant Tournament Directors.
Hockey India has also appointed Steve Catton as Competitions Director of the league. Catton is also an experienced hand, having served as the Competitions Director for the European Hockey League.
All the league matches across five venues would be supervised by a panel of five technical Officers – all are Indians – Rakesh Bhatia, Feroz Khan, Rajendra Shelar, Ashutosh Verma and Faiyaz Qureshi.
There will also be a 10-member Judges Panel of the league. The panel comprises Sonia Bathla, Davinder Bhatia, Kalvin d’Cruz, Nidhi Gupta, Khalid Hussain, Michael Lal, Milind Narwekar, Harinder Sangha, Anjali Sharma and Avinash Srivastava (all from India).
