Hockey India announces panel of umpires

Bhubaneswar: Hockey India (HI) today announced a panel of umpires for the second edition of the Hero Hockey India League to be played between January 25 and February 23.

Bjorn Isberg will lead the team of umpires as tournament director in the league to be played across Delhi, Mumbai, Mohali, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi and Lucknow, HI sources said. In recent years, Bjorn has conducted many events as Tournament Director including 2012 London Olympics, FIH Champions Trophy tournaments at Lahore (2004), Kuala Lumpur (2007) and Auckland (2011) and FIH Indoor World Cup 2011 in Poland. Bjorn will be supported by Claudius de Sale and Shakeel Quereshi as Assistant Tournament Directors while Craig Gribble will be the Umpires Manager for the Tournament with ten national and international umpires to support him during the event, sources said. Gribble expects this to be a wonderful opportunity for the Umpire group to develop and apply their craft to an exciting brand of hockey, sources added. Gribble will have a team of well known international umpires including Diego Barbas from Argentina, Eduardo Lizana from Spain and Jakub Mejzlik from Czechoslovakia. The Indian contingent includes Javed Shaikh, Raghu Prasad, G S Sangha, Pankaj Tyagi, Ripudaman Sharma, Harshwardhan. The entire team of Umpires has established credentials of adjudging many international tournaments. In a statement, chairman of Hero Hockey India Leage Dr Narinder Batra said: "I am extremely delighted to have such a strong and well established panel of technical experts to judge the tournament. This clearly raises the profile of the League many folds amongst international audience. The team is amongst the chosen few experts who are well respected across the world for their precise and fair decisions." Team of Indian Judges include Devendra Bhatia, Anjali Sharma, Sania Bhatia, Michael Lal, Milind Narvekar and Avinash Srivastava.