Odisha’s Birendra Lakra And Amit Rohidas Make It To The Olympic Squad

Odisha’s Birendra Lakra And Amit Rohidas Make It To The Olympic Squad

Everybody knows Odisha and hockey go hand in hand. Odisha’s impressive hockey talent pool has always made its presence felt in India’s national game. On Friday, Hockey India announced the 16 member national men’s squad for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics and Odisha’s Birendra Lakra and Amit Rohidas made it to the team.

Fullback Birendra Lakra, a London 2012 Olympic veteran and defender Amit Rohidas are all geared up and eyeing gold for India at the world’s biggest sporting event. Odisha Sports announced the news via a tweet and congratulated the star defenders and wished the best for the sporting extravaganza.

CM Naveen Patnaik also congratulated both the players for making it to the Olympic squad and hoped that the team will bring laurels for the team.

After playing at London 2012, Lakra missed the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because of a major knee injury. 10 players in the 16 member team will be making their Olympics debut. The team has experienced campaigners like goalkeeper PR Sreejesh, midfielder Manpreet Singh, defenders Harmanpreet Singh, Rupinder Pal Singh and Surender Kumar, and forward Mandeep Singh.

Along with the above, impressive talents like Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakanta Sharma, Sumit and debutant forwards, Shamsher Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Gurjant Singh and Lalit Kumar Upadhyay will be part of the team. For PR Sreejesh, this will be his third outing at the Olympics for India.

Currently the team is in the middle of an intense national training camp at the SAI Center in Bengaluru. India has won 11 medals at the Olympics that includes 8 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronzes and is looking forward to adding to the tally.  The current team has won the 2016  and 2018 Asian Champions Trophy, 2017 Asia Cup Gold and 2019 World Series as well over the last few years.

To prepare for the Olympics the men’s team travelled to Europe and Argentina for warm up games and displayed a good show against top teams like Germany, Great Britain and reigning Olympic Champions Argentina. The Indian team also got a chance to return to high-level competition like FIH Pro League where they defeated Argentina in both the matches and set the tone for the Olympics.

The Men’s Squad: Goalkeeper-PR Sreejesh; Defenders: Harmanpreet Singh, Rupinder Pal Singh, Surenedr Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Birendra Lakra; Midfielders- Hardik Singh, Manpreet Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Nilakantha Sharma, Sumit; Forwards-Shamsher Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Gurjant Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhay, Mandeep Singh.