Mercantile Hockey Tourney begins on January 7

Sanjaya Ariyaratne

The Mercantile League Hockey Tournament, organised by the Mercantile Hockey Association, will get under way on January 7 and will be continued till the end of March at three different venues in Colombo namely Astro Turf, Reid Avenue, Colombo 7, P. Saravanamuttu Stadium and Malay grounds, Colombo 2.

The teams have been grouped into four and the matches will be worked off on a league basis.

The ‘A’ division comprises altogether six teams in which the cream of the stickers in the mercantile sector in the island will be seen in action representing their companies.

Last year winners Commercial Bank are the hot favourites in the Division ‘A’ they will receive stiff opposition from Hatton National Bank. Sampath Bank, Singer Sri Lanka, Hatton National Bank ‘B’ and Seylan Bank are the other teams who vie for honours in the division A. The ‘A’ division winners will be awarded the Singer Trophy.

There will be only three teams in the ‘B’ division including Browns Group, John Keells Group and HSBC while Uni Levers, Dialog Telekom, Arpico and SriLankan Airlines are the teams in the ‘C’ division fray. The teams in the ‘D’ division are Airport and Aviation, Hilton and AWD Group.

The ‘A’ and ‘B’ division fixtures will be worked off at Astro turf and P. Saravanamuttu Stadium Colombo while ‘C’ and ‘D’ division matches are scheduled to be conducted at Malay Grounds, Colombo.

On the opening day of the tournament Browns Group will confront John Keells in a ‘B’ division match at P. Saravanamuttu Stadium while Hatton National Bank ‘A’ will battle it out against Seylan Bank on January 9 at Astro turf.

In a ‘D’ division match Hilton will take on Airport and Aviation on January 11 at Malay grounds and will be followed by SriLankan Airlines taking on Dialog Telekom in a ‘C’ division fixture at the same venue.