Next week the Men’s Junior AHF Cup will begin in the ancient, naturally beautiful and gentle city of Muscat, Oman over the course of 10 days, in which a total of 23 matches will be played at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex from December 5th to 14th. The Oman Hockey Federation took care of this event in a city surrounded by sandy beaches and magnificent old forts. The organization also got help from the International Hockey Federation.
The event will feature the teams of Singapore, China, Iran, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong China and Oman.
This year the competition format will consist of 9 teams participating and the preliminary round will be played in a two-pool format, which will be followed by crossover and classification matches. The top four teams from this tournament will qualify for the Men’s Junior Asia Cup 2020 and will join the teams of Bangladesh, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Pakistan who are already qualified. Also, the Men’s Junior Asia Cup 2020 is a qualifier round for the Hockey Junior World Cup 2021.
The venue for all matches will be the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex which is the most important stadium in the city of Muscat. It is used for multiple sports events and has a capacity of 34,000 seated people. The 2018 Asian Men’s Hockey Champions Trophy took place in here. The playing surface is a water-based green artificial turf and only FIH-approved hockey balls will be used for the tournament.