Jyothikumaran added,``In fact Malaysia is also keen to participate in the tournament and confirmation on their participation will be known shortly'.

The tournament would be the basis for selection of the final squad for the Asian Games. The selection committee would pick a team of 16 plus four (stand byes) for the tournament, in which India play hosts, Thailand, Bangla desh and Uzbekistan.

He said his Malaysian counterpart had confirmed that they had never called off the tour and the four Test matches scheduled would greatly help in the preparation for Games. The Test matches would be played from Nov 23 to 28 -- two each in Chennai and Hyderabad. The Indian team would also participate in the Egyptian tournament during middle of November, hesaid.

The final squad for participation in the Asian Games would be sent to the Indian Olympic Association, the apex body for sports, before Nov 6, the last day for giving entries.

With the inclusion of Gavin Ferreira, the senior probable list had become 30 and for the first time the IHF had 58 player including 28 in the second string team to rotate for best results.

Development team

The fortnight-long hockey camp for the Indian development team began here today, with 14 of the 28 members reporting on the opening day at Chennai.

In an informal chat, team coach CR Kumar said the rest of the players would be arriving in batches. ``We would have the full strength by Sunday morning for the fitness test,'' he added.

He said while the morning sessions would be devoted for physical conditioning at the Nehru Stadium, the players would have practice sessions in the evening at the hockey stadium.

Kumar, along with assistant coaches Harinder Singh and V Prabhakaran, has drawn a strenous schdeule forthe boys. ``We would be having three weight training sessions, a bounding endurance session to strengthen the muscles of the players and one or two days would be devoted for hill training where the players would be asked to run for about 300 to 400 metres uphill.

Towards the closing stages of the camp the players would be put in match situations. The players would play around four matches with SAI and other teams, he added.

Kumar said though he would have specific work-outs on penalty-corner conversions, more emphasis would be laid on indirect conversions.

``Since we did not have any specialist in this department, we would be concentrating more on indirect conversions,'' he added.

Besides, players would also have a video session on this aspect to enable them to rectify the mistakes committed by them. ``Instead of telling them orally, it would be better for them to watch the video tapes and correct shortcomings,'' he Kumar said.