Bengaluru, June 18: Goalkeeper PR Sreejesh and creative midfielder Manpreet Singh are heading for their third successive Olympic Games hockey competition, having been named in the national squad that will play in Tokyo2020 next month. Harmanpreet Singh, Rupinder Pal Singh, Surender Kumar and Mandeep Singh are the others with Olympic Games experience.
The team includes as many as 10 Olympic debutants, including the vastly experienced Birendra Lakra who missed the Rio Olympics in 2016 due to a knee injury, Amit Rohidas, Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakanta Sharma, Sumit and forwards, Shamsher Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Gurjant Singh and Lalit Kumar Upadhyay will be the other debutants.
Chief Coach Graham Reid said the selection of 16 players was not an easy. “There is a lot of quality and ambition in this group. The performance levels are at an optimum and. more importantly, they work well together. We are now focussed on training with the same intensity and our goal is to put forward our best performance as a collective unit in Tokyo,” he said.
The Indian team is grouped in Pool A along with reigning Olympic Champion Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and host Japan. The tournament takes place from July 23 to August 5 in Tokyo.
The men’s team travelled to Europe and Argentina as part of their preparations. Having put up a good show against teams like Germany, Britain and Argentina on the tours, the World No.4 side is pumped up for Tokyo2020. The team also returned to high-level competition like FIH Pro League, where it defeated Argentina in both matches and set the tone for the Olympics.
It has been 41 years since the Indian team last won an Olympic medal and the current squad is very determined to end that drought in Tokyo. In the past few years, India has won the 2016 and 2018 Asian Champions Trophy, 2017 Asia Cup Gold and 2019 World Series.
Hockey India President Gyanendro Ningombam said the team is in a position to revisit the glory days and be a medal contender. “The recent performance against Argentina at the FIH Pro League shows it is headed in the right direction,” he said. Indian has won 11 Medals which includes eight gold, one silver and two bronze in the Olympic Games.
Team photo: Courtesy Hockey India
