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Bhubaneswar, Dec 10 (PTI) The upcoming Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka will be a perfect platform for the fringe players to showcase their talent and stake a claim in the first team, said Indian men’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh.<\/p>\n
The tournament, originally scheduled to be held last year, has been postponed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and will now be played from December 14 to 22.<\/p>\n
This will be India’s first outing after the team’s historic Olympics bronze medal winning campaign earlier this year. The Manpreet Singh-led side will be without eight players from the Tokyo Games squad, including the likes of veteran goalkeeper PR Sreejesh who has been rested,<\/p>\n
“With nearly 10 players who were part of the Tokyo Olympic squad being rested, this is a fantastic opportunity for the players who had been waiting on the sidelines to get a chance to perform in a major international tournament. This will be a good platform for them to showcase their talent and temperament,” said Manpeet before leaving for Dhaka on Friday.<\/p>\n
Defending champions India would begin their campaign on the opening day against Korea before locking horns against Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan and hosts Bangladesh in the single-pool tournament for top honours.<\/p>\n
“This is our first outing after the Tokyo Olympics so naturally there is a lot of excitement among the players. We have had a good training camp in Bhubaneswar and I feel since the weather here is quite similar to that of Dhaka, we won’t take long to acclimatise,” the skipper said.<\/p>\n
“It will be a good tournament not just in terms of competition but also to understand about other team’s capabilities. We assess the progress of other Asian countries ahead of the all-important Asian Games and Asia Cup next year,’ the ace mid-fielder added.<\/p>\n
After Korea, India will play Bangladesh on December 15, followed by matches against arch-rivals Pakistan on December 17, Malaysia on December 18 and Japan on December 19.<\/p>\n
The top-four teams from the pool stages will progress to the semi-finals to be played on December 21 followed by the title clash on December 22.<\/p>\n
In the previous edition of the event held in Muscat in 2018, India had jointly lifted the title along with Pakistan as the final was called off due to incessant rains.<\/p>\n
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Bhubaneswar, Dec 10 (PTI) The upcoming Asian Champions Trophy in Dhaka will be a perfect platform for the fringe players to showcase their talent and stake a claim in the first team, said Indian men’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh. The tournament, originally scheduled to be held last year, has been postponed multiple times due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-178975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}