The franchise-base hockey league, Hockey Champions Trophy was concluded on Thursday with a great enthusiasm when Acme Chattogram clinched the maiden title defeating Monarch Padma in a thrilling final of the tournament on Thursday.
In a bid to regain the past glory of country’s hockey, the Franchise hockey league, first ever of it’s kind in Bangladesh was organized.
The organizers are success in respect of their objective to accelerate the interest of fans to regain the popularity and to bring back them in the stadium.
The first attempt was a successful one as after long time a good number of hockey fans gathered at the Maulana Bhashani Hockey Stadium to enjoy the tournament where a lot of stars from home and abroad played.
All the matches of the tournament were very entertaining when the results of most of the matches were settled with narrow margin after hard contest.
The tournament was hugely highlighted when former Pakistani hockey star Shahbaz Ahmed, famous as the ‘Maradona of Hockey’ joined in a team as their mentor, apart from Shahbaz, some quality foreign players and coaches also guided the teams.
Specially, during the final match between ACME Chottogram and Monarch Padma, huge crowds enjoyed the keenly contested final.
For a long, due to some in-house conflict among the organizers, graph of popularity of hockey have been downward when hockey was in second place in the country in term of popularity.
Bangladesh Hockey Federation (BHF) with the all-out support from ACE, a sister concern of the Bashundhara Group six teams, Walton, Monarch Mart, Acme, Rupayan Group, Metro Group and Saif Power Group competed in the first ever Franchise League in Bangladesh.
It was incredible to see that the first time the tournament caught the attention of a large number of hockey fans and influenced them to go to the stadium. Hockey fans, who came to the stadium after a long time enjoyed the matches throughout the tournament when in almost every match huge spectators attended to enjoy the games.
Specially, the final was a highly entertaining and as well as a thriller one when between ACE Chottogram came from behind ended the match stipulated 60 minutes game on 2-2 and finally snatched the victory by 3-2 in penalty stroke.
