Remaining WSH venues to be fixed in Oct first week

"(Technical Director) Dennis (Meredith) is arriving in India on October 3 for another inspection. He has already made one inspection and would submit his report after his second inspection. We would then finalise the remaining two venues," said a spokesperson for WSH, which is a joint initiative of Nimbus Sports and the Indian Hockey Federation.

The organisers have already finalised six venues -- Delhi, Punjab, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The remaining two, from among Pune, Bhopal, Ranchi, Lucknow, Kolkata, Rourkela and Manipur, would be finalised in the first week of October.

The spokesperson said that while Pune and Bhopal have emerged front runners along with Ranchi, interest has also come in from potential franchises in Kolkata and Lucknow.

The tournament, to be run from December 15 to January 22, 2012, would be an eight-team event and would see 176 leading players from Australia, Argentina, Spain, Pakistan, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, Malaysia and India taking part.

The eight city-based franchise outfits would be led by Saradara Singh, Adrian D'Souza, Arjun Halappa, Prabhjot Singh, Brent Livermore of Australia, Rehan Butt from Pakistan, Rodrigo Garza from Spain and Lucas Vila from Argentina.

Meanwhile, Mumbai Hockey Association has been given time till October 10 to import a new artificial turf and then till November 15 to complete the laying of the new turf.

MHA officials are confident that the turf would be with them by the first week of October and are confident of completing the process in time, the spokesperson informed.