MALAYSIAN MEN'S HOCKEY TEAM - GROUPINGS, FORMAT & SCHEDULE - 2023 FIH ODISHA MEN'S HOCKEY WORLD CUP

The Groupings:

Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023

Group A: Australia, Argentina, France, South Africa

Group B: Belgium, Germany, South Korea, Japan

Group C: Netherlands, New Zealand, Malaysia, Chile

Group D: India, England, Spain, Wales

Format

As mentioned, 16 teams are divided into pools of four. The single round-robin format will decide the standings. Also, Toppers from each pool will directly go through to the Quarterfinal. While the remaining four teams will be decided through Crossovers. The rest will go on, as usual, i.e., quarterfinals, then semifinals, and finally the final. There will be classifications going on further down which will decide the exact position a team finishes the tournament.

Rules for pool classifications based on new tie-breaker rules.

Before moving to the knockouts, one should understand a complicated term called “Crossovers”. Crossovers can be seen as the pre-quarterfinals, except half the teams for the next round are already decided. This is something one can only see in Hockey. The second and third teams from each pool will form the four crossover fixtures. January 22 will see C2 vs D3 (Crossover 1) and C3 vs D2 (Crossover 2) while the next day will see A2 vs B3 (Crossover 3) and B2 vs A3 (Crossover 4). Crossover fixtures are abbreviated as C1, C2 etc.

The first quarterfinal will be played between A1 vs Winner C1. The second will be played between B1 vs winner C2 and so on. The winner of the first and fourth and second and third quarterfinals will face each other in the semifinal on January 27 at Kalinga Stadium.

The final and third-place encounters will take place on January 29 at the same venue.

Deciding rest positions

Fourth-placed teams of each pool and losers of each crossover will form M33-M36. The matchups will be like A4 vs Loser C1, B4 vs Loser C2 and so on. Losers of each of these games will face a one-off (L-M33 vs L-M34, L-M35 vs L-M36) to form the 13th-16th place classification. While the winners will face one-off to form the 9th-12th place classification. The order for that will be decided by the scoreline and margin of the result.

As for full event schedule kindly click the following link to see the standings, official scores etc.

https://www.fih.hockey/events/world-cup/men/fih-odisha-hockey-mens-world-cup-2023-bhubaneswar---rourkela-1389

Thanking you.

Maninderjit Singh (Mike)