Announcing this here on Friday, Indian Hockey Federation Secretary-General K Jothikumaran said that for the first time ever, some of the matches in the Nationals will be played under floodlights on the artificial surface at the Police Stadium, basically to get through a programme of 90 league matches.

``This will be the last Nationals to be played under this format (league-cum-knock-out). We will be finalising a new format during the IHF Council meeting at Hyderabad,'' he said. The Council meeting will be held at the fag end of the Nationals.

Tournament Director Mohammad Ghouse said the teams have been divided into eight pools for the preliminary league. The top team from each pool will progress to the quarter-finals which will be played on March 18 and 24. The semifinals are slated for March 25 and the final on March 26.

To cut costs, theleague for teams in pool A, B, C, D, will be played from March 10 to 16, followed by the quarter-finals (winner of A vs D, and B vs C) on March 18.

The league for the teams in the other four pools (G, H, I, J) will be held from March 16 to 22, and after a day's break, the second set of quarter-finals will be played on March 24, Ghouse said.

There will be seven matches daily during the league stage, starting from 6.15 a.m. The last match of the day will commence at 7.30 p.m., he said.

Organising secretary G Sathyanarayana, who is also the secretary of the Hyderabad Hockey Association, said efforts were on to rope in enough sponsorship to meet the estimated expenditure of Rs 35 lakh.

The Groupings

Pool A: Railways, Punjab, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan

Pool B: Gujarat, Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Postal, CISF

Pool C: Mumbai, BSF, SAIL, FCI, Vidarbha

Pool D: Indian Airlines, Orissa, Haryana, Maharashtra, J&K

Pool G: Karnataka, Central Excise,Chandigarh, Delhi, Madhya Bharat, Tatas

Pool H: Services, CRPF, Bengal, Kerala, Assam

Pool I: Air-India, PSB, Combined Universities, Pondicherry, Madhya Pradesh

Pool J: Tamil Nadu, Patiala, Bhopal, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur.

FIH official to supervise

In a bid to improve the umpiring standards in India, the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) plans to invite Graham Nash of England, the chairman of umpires board, International Hockey Federation, for the Senior National Championship at Hyderabad.

IHF Secretary-General K Jothikumaran informed mediapersons here on Friday that Nash, apart from observing the umpiring in the tournament, will be involved in a seminar for which the IHF would invite leading women umpires also. ``we will be writing to the All-India Women's Hockey Federation on this,'' he said.

The IHF has posted 23 umpires, including all the active international-grade umpires of the country, for the Nationals. As such, there will be 19 outstation umpires and fourlocal supervising the matches.