Playing hooky

BIZSPORT

ON PAPER, the idea of a Premier Hockey League cannot be faulted, even if it has taken some time in coming. The PHL will finally happen in January 2005. For some years now, the Indian Hockey Federation has not had its National Championships, but has been talking about the National League.

Now that it is finally happening with a proper marketing company, Leisure Sports Management (LSM), backing it and ESPN-Star Sports as its partner, there can only be a sigh of relief.

The first edition will be held at the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad. However, there are more than a few things that need to be worked out properly. But we will come back to that in a while.

Everything that the IHF has announced sounds great. Giving teams jazzed up names like Sher-e-Jalandhar, Maratha Warriors, Bangalore Hi-Fliers and Chennai Veerans sounds good.

There is also the plan of having four quarters of 17 minutes-30 seconds each instead of two halves of 35 minutes each, giving more scope for TV advertising time. Also, ESPN-Star has promised some innovative coverage.

The format of the league, PHL as it will be called, has 10 teams divided into two tiers. Tier I will be called the Premier Division while Tier II will be known as the First Division. The league will follow a round-robin format, with all teams playing each other twice.

The champion will be determined by their total points with wins fetching three points and a win in tie-breaker getting two for the winner and one for the loser.

There is also the plan to allow teams to induct upto a maximum of five foreign players in each team. According to K P S Gill, President of IHF, they already have names of 17 foreign players who are ready to play in India.

The winner of the Premier Division will get Rs 30 lakh, the runner-up Rs 10 lakh. In Tier II, the winners get Rs 4 lakh and the runner-up Rs 2.5 lakh. There will also be prize money for best players in various positions. A total of Rs 71 lakh will be available in prize money.

All this sounds great. So where's the catch? The problem is that nothing is clear on what the players will get and how the teams will be financed for things like training, travel, board and lodging and players' fees.

Also unclear is the ownership of the various teams: will it be the city, as most teams seem to be named after them, a state association, or will the team be shared by more than one state association in the region? And will the IHF draw up the teams, because if they do, they can keep out whoever they like.

For instance, the IHF has made it clear that Dhanraj Pillay and Baljit Saini are unlikely to be back in the Indian team. Does that mean the duo will not even make it to the League? After all, in most sport, when players go off the national side, they continue to figure on the domestic circuit.

The IHF and its partners have said that they will look for sponsorships. But it does not seem to be clear who will look for the sponsors and what the players will get. And where will the money for the foreign players come from?

Further, will all the top clubs of the country make their players available for the National League in which the teams are region-based. Players from Pakistan, South Korea and even Spain, Germany and Holland are expected to be signed up for various teams.

News that the German and some other European leagues have expressed interest in hiring Indian players isn't good for the organisers of the PHL. Naturally, the fee from European clubs will be higher than what players can expect to get in India.

So will the IHF bar Indians from playing in foreign leagues? This would be unfair on the Indian players who haven't had a chance to play for good money.

For now, since Leisure Sports and ESPN Star Sports may pick up some tabs for the conduct of the tournament, the biggest worry is the actual financing of the individual teams. And that's one grey area the organisers seemed to have left open.

One has to wait with crossed fingers and toes to see how the first edition of the PHL goes.