Indian men’s hockey team has won the bronze medal in Paris Olympics 2024. India defeated Spain 2-1 in the bronze medal match played on 8 August. Goalkeeper PR Sreejesh played an important role in the memorable performance of the Indian team. Experienced goalkeeper PR Sreejesh, playing his last tournament, kept protecting the Indian goal like a rock throughout the tournament, despite his dream of changing the color of the medal being shattered, he said that now he has the last chance and the medal can still be won. . And he fulfilled his promise.
…that quarter-final against Great Britain
Sreejesh’s most memorable performance in the Paris Olympics was in the quarter-final match against Great Britain. In that match, India had to play with 10 players for 43 minutes because defender Amit Rohidas was shown a red card. Then Sreejesh made many saves in the entire match. Then in the shootout also, he made two tremendous saves and took India to the semi-finals. Sreejesh made brilliant saves in the semi-finals also, although India lost 2-3 to Germany in that match. Now Sreejesh’s magic was seen in this bronze medal match against Spain also. Sreejesh did not allow Spain to score a goal in the last minutes. Then the Spanish team got two penalty corners.
Back-to-back medal victories secured by the Indian Hockey team in the Olympics! 🥉😍
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PR Sreejesh had already announced that Paris Olympics was going to be his last tournament. This was the fourth Olympics for Sreejesh, who played 336 matches for India. 36-year-old Sreejesh, who has played in the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and World Cup, also played an important role in helping India win the bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 with excellent goalkeeping. Now his magic worked in front of the goal post in Paris also.
PR Sreejesh made his debut for the Indian team in 2010. He was a member of the Indian team that won the gold medal in the 2014 Asian Games and the bronze medal in the 2018 Asian Games. He has been a member of the joint-winning team of the Asian Champions Trophy in 2018, the gold medal-winning team of the 2019 FIH Men’s Series Final in Bhubaneswar and the silver medal-winning team of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Showed strong performance in Asian Games last year also
He played an important role in taking India to third place in the FIH Hockey Pro League 2021-22. Sreejesh was awarded the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award in 2021 and is only the second player from India to win the ‘World Games Athlete of the Year’ award. He won the FIH ‘Goalkeeper of the Year’ award twice in a row in 2021 and 2022. He performed brilliantly in the Asian Games last year due to which the Indian team was successful in securing the ticket for Paris Olympics 2024 by winning the gold medal.
Indian hockey team in Paris Olympics 2024
Goalkeeper: P R Sreejesh.
Defenders: Jarmanpreet Singh, Amit Rohidas (out of semi-finals), Harmanpreet Singh, Sumit, Sanjay.
Midfielders: Rajkumar Pal, Shamsher Singh, Manpreet Singh, Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad.
Forward: Abhishek, Sukhjit Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Mandeep Singh, Gurjant Singh.
Alternative players: Neelkant Sharma, Jugraj Singh, Krishna Bahadur Pathak