KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 31 — Apart from the challenge on the pitch, the Speedy Tigers will have to contend with ‘travel lag’ between the venues of the 2023 Hockey World Cup which will be held in the two main cities of the east coast state of Odisha in India, namely Bhubaneswar (Kalinga Stadium) and Rourkela (Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium).
The most prestigious hockey competition will be held from January 13 to January 29.
With the distance between the two co-host cities at more than 300 kilometres, it takes up to nine hours to travel by land or two hours by flight and the national hockey squad must shuttle back and forth to play several scheduled matches.
The Malaysians, who are ranked 11th in the world, will leave for Bhubaneswar this Friday and continue their journey to Rourkela on a chartered flight for the first three (one warm-up) matches, before flying back to Bhubaneswar for the next match (vs New Zealand on January 19).
In Rourkela, the national team will face Spain in a warm-up tie on January 11, before kicking off their Group C campaign against three-time champions and world No. 3 Netherlands (January 14) and play Chile (January 16) at the newly-built Birsa Munda International Hockey Stadium.
The team managed by A. Arul Selvaraj will then head to Bhubaneswar for the final group game against world No. 9 New Zealand (January 19) at the Kalinga Stadium.
The Speedy Tigers will continue their campaign in Bhubaneswar if they finish in the top three spots or be forced to return to Roukerla for classification-match action.
“There are several players who have played in Bhubaneswar, but have never seen action at Rourkela. At first, we wanted to bring in additional staff, but the organisers have restricted the size of the team to only 30 people because they need to rent planes and so on.
“(Because) It is about nine hours by road, so we decided not to bring extra staff on that route since there are no (commercial) flights to Roukerla. I am not a fan of that (long travel during tournaments) but hope the infrastructure and transport arrangements will be good.
“The organisers are doing all the logistics arrangements in terms of transport and hotels, so I believe it will be good. (However) We will only know once we arrive there,” he said.
Based on the tournament format, the group winner will qualify for the quarter-finals while the second and third-placed teams will compete against teams in Group D which consists of England, India, Spain and Wales, in a tie-breaker round in the hunt for a slot to the quarter-finals.
The knock-out phase — quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final — will take place at Kalinga Stadium (in Bhubaneswar), while the losing teams will play in classification matches at the Birsa Munda Stadium (in Rourkela).
In summary, 20 of the 44 matches for this year’s World Cup will be held at Birsa Munda Stadium, which is India’s largest hockey stadium with a capacity for 20,000 spectators, while the rest will be held at Kalinga Stadium which was the sole venue for the 2018 World Cup.
— Bernama
