Pro Volleyball League: Kochi Blue Spikers to play U Mumba Volley in the opener

Kochi Blue Spikers will kick-start the inaugural edition of the Pro Volleyball League when it takes on U Mumba Volley at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Kochi on February 2.

Published : Jan 10, 2019 21:09 IST

The Pro Volleyball League teams and their owners were unveiled in Mumbai in November, last year.

Kochi Blue Spikers will kick-start the inaugural edition of the Pro Volleyball League when it takes on U Mumba Volley at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Kochi on February 2.

Volleyball Federation of India (VFI) secretary general Ramavtar Singh Jakhar and PVL CEO Joy Bhattacharjya unveiled the tournament schedule here on the sidelines of the National Volleyball Championships at the Jawaharlal Nehru indoor stadium on Thursday.

Kochi will host the round robin phase from February 2-14 before the tournament resumes on the 16th in Chennai at the JLN which will also stage the semifinals and the final.

Bhattacharjya, who was the project manager of the local organising committee of the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup in India, is keen to help professionalise volleyball in the country.

 

"We (Indian men's volleyball team) need to improve our fitness, international coaching and analytics which could help this team break into the top 20 world rankings (currently ranked 131 in FIVB) in a couple of years. They were already ranked 38 before the rankings change because they didn't play for two years," told Sportstar .

Former players and Arjuna Award winners Suresh Mishra, G. Sridharan, Dalel Singh and Amir Singh were also present at the event.