Hockey India announced a 16-member squad for India men's hockey team for the Tokyo Olympics. The postponed Tokyo Olympics will start from 23rd July 2021 and will run till 8th August 2021. The Indian hockey team for the Tokyo Olympics is a perfect balance of experience, talent, and passion for the sport. Indian team qualified for the Summer Olympics by defeating Russia in a playoff at the Bhubaneswar leg of the 2019 FIR Olympic qualifiers. Therefore, the India men's team secured one of the seven tickets available and got qualified for the Olympics.
The 16 players selected in the Indian hockey team for the Tokyo Olympics-
P.R. Sreejesh (Goalkeeper)
Harmanpreet Singh, Rupinder Pal, Surender Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Birendra Lakra (Defenders)
Hardik Singh, Manpreet Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakanta Sharma, Sumit (Midfielders)
Shamser Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Gurjant Singh, Lalit Kumar, Mandeep Singh (Forwards)
Speaking on the team selection, Chief Coach Graham Reid said, "It has not been an easy process to make the final selection of 16 players as there is a lot of quality and ambition in this group of players. The performance levels of all the athletes are at an optimum level and more importantly they work well together. They know what it means to represent the country at the Olympics. 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."
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