The second leg of the Premier Hockey League will start amidst fanfare from February 11, 2007 at the Sector 42 Hockey Stadium in Chandigarh. The seven teams of the premier tier will now move to Punjab, the heartland of Hockey in India.
This is the first time that the league has had twin venues -- Chennai and Chandigarh and is being played over a two-month period.
The second leg sees eight new foreign players joining the seven teams for a round of league matches followed by a best of 3 finals. 11 Pakistani, 3 Spanish, 2 South African, 2 Australian, a Malaysian and an Argentine mount up the foreign element here.
Indian Hockey Federation general secretary K Jothikumaran said the PHL had received tremendous response from both the international players and federations.
"The second leg sees some of the best in the world competing in the league with Santi Freixa and Jamie Dwyer leading the foreign players' charge," said Jothikumaran.
The foreign players allotted among the teams for the Chandigarh leg are as follows:
Sher-E-Jalandhar Chandigarh Dynamos
Santi Freixa - Spain Lloyd Norris Jones - South Africa
Muhammad Imran - Pakistan Zeeshan Ashraf Pakistan
Chennai Veerans Bangalore Lions
Albert Casas - Spain Paul Blake - South Africa
Kuhan Shanmuganathan - Malaysia Mohammad Waqas - Pakistan
Muhammad Zubair - Pakistan Rehan Butt - Pakistan
Maratha Warriors Hyderabad Sultans
Jamie Dwyer/Brent Livermore Australia* Ramon Alegre - Spain
Adnan Maqsood - Pakistan Shakeel Abbasi - Pakistan
Imran Warsi - Pakistan Tariq Aziz - Pakistan
Orissa Steelers
Mario Almada - Argentina
Salman Akbar - Pakistan
Adnan Zakir - Pakistan
Note: Jamie Dwyer will play from February 11 onwards, Brent Livermore will replace him from February 23