Sports

Hockey players Harmanpreet Singh and Gurjit Kaur nominated for ‘Player of the Year’ award

FIH Awards 2021: Indian Men’s Hockey Team and Women’s Hockey Team performed brilliantly in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics. The Indian men’s hockey team won the bronze medal in the Olympics after 41 years. Apart from this, the women’s hockey team had missed out on the medal. Both the teams had made headlines all over the world with their excellent performance. This is the reason that the International Hockey Federation (FIH) has nominated Harmanpreet Singh and Gurjeet Kaur for the ‘Player of the Year’ award.

Indian players managed to make it to almost all the categories. Indian team’s goalkeeper PR Sreejesh is in the race to become the best goalkeeper in the men’s section, while in the women’s section, Savita Punia has got the nomination for this title. Apart from this, Indian men’s team head coach Graham Reid and his women’s team counterpart Shord Marin have been nominated for the FIH Coach of the Year for men and women.

Harmanpreet scored six goals in eight matches with her drag-flick at the Tokyo Olympics, helping the Indian men’s team clinch a historic bronze medal. The team ended its 41-year drought with this medal. Gurjit, on the other hand, was an important member of the Indian women’s team that lost to Britain in the Olympic bronze medal play-off. However, the team was successful in reaching the Olympic semi-finals for the first time. The 25-year-old from Punjab scored a goal against Australia in the quarter-finals to give the team a 1-0 win.

Apart from Gurjit, others in the race for the FIH Women’s Player of the Year award are Argentina’s Augustina Albertario and Augustina Gorzelene, along with Netherlands’ Eva de Goede, Friedrich Matala and Maria Verchoor. In the men’s section, besides Harmanpreet, Olympic gold medalists Arthur van Doren and Alexander Hendricks of Belgium and silver medalists Jake Wetten, Aran Zalevsky and Tim Brand of Australia are named.

Sreejesh will face Belgium’s Vincent Vanasch and Australia’s Andrew Charter for the Men’s Goalkeeper of the Year award. In the race for the title with Savita in women, the names of Britain’s Maddie Hinch and Argentina’s Belen Susie are included.

India’s Sharmila Devi has been nominated for the FIH Emerging Female Player of the Year award for women along with Fiona Crackles (Great Britain) and Valentina Raposo (Argentina), while Vivek Prasad has been nominated for Mustafa Qasim (South Africa) and Sr. With Findlay (New Zealand) nominated in the men’s category.

The FIH said players, coaches, media and fans can vote for nominees in the respective women’s and men’s players, goalkeepers, rising players and players of the year categories from Monday (23 August) to 15 September.

In this voting, the share of votes of national associations will be 50 percent, while the share of votes of media and fans/players will be 25-25 percent. Winners will be announced next month or early October. These awards were not given in 2020 due to the Kovid-19 pandemic. Nominations for these awards have been made on the basis of performance of Tokyo Olympics since January 2020.

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