PANAJI: India’s tremendous improvement in hockey has finally resulted in a Olympic medal, drawing wide-ranging emotional and appreciative reactions from Twitterati as a 41-year long wait came to an end early on Thursday morning.
India made a fantastic comeback from a two-goal deficit to beat Germany 5-4 in the bronze medal playoff at the ongoing Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Minutes after the team’s hard-earned success, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi tweeted:
“Historic! A day that will be etched in the memory of every Indian. Congratulations to our Men’s Hockey Team for bringing home the Bronze. With this feat, they have captured the imagination of the entire nation, especially our youth. India is proud of our Hockey team. 🏑”
“Congratulations to our men’s hockey team for winning an Olympic Medal in hockey after 41 years. The team showed exceptional skills, resilience & determination to win. This historic victory will start a new era in hockey and will inspire the youth to take up and excel in the sport,” tweeted the President’s Secretariat.
“A BILLION CHEERS for INDIA 🇮🇳!
Boys, you’ve done it !
We can’t keep calm !
TeamIndia 🥉!
Our Men’s Hockey Team dominated and defined their destiny in the Olympic history books today, yet again !
We are extremely proud of you!”, tweeted Minister for Youth Affairs & Sports, Anurag Thakur.
India’s only individual Olympics gold-medallist, shooter Abhinav Bindra had this to say in his tweet.
“An emotional moment for the entire nation, a moment of pride. The long wait has ended! Congratulations to the Indian Men’s Hockey team for their splendid achievement. @TheHockeyIndia..Also a massive congratulations to all the those who supported the sports development over the last decade. @CMO_Odisha ‘s contribution has been immense so has the constant support of @Media_SAI , @TheHockeyIndia and the vision shown by @kukubatra57.”
Team India chief coach Graham Reid said: “Pretty proud of these legends!”
Ex-cricketer and 2011 World Cup winner, Gautam Gambhir’s tweet reads:
“Forget 1983, 2007 or 2011, this medal in Hockey is bigger than any World Cup! #IndianHockeyMyPride 🇮🇳”.
Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar says “Congratulations to each & every member of the hockey contingent on winning the #Bronze for India!
A fantastic hard fought win…The penalty corner save by Sreejesh in the dying moments of the game was amazing.👏🏻
Entire 🇮🇳 is immensely proud!”
Livenewsgoa.com founder/editor Niraj Prabhu hails the achievement of the Manpreet Singh-led team as a landmark day marking the upswing of hockey in India. “The bronze medal definitely feels like gold medal for the sheer scale of impact that this success at the grandest stage, is going to have on hockey in the country. Youth will now dream big and aspire to play the sport, which has suffered a lot due to decades of decline in the standard. Now on, it’s going to be restored to its glory days that saw India winning eight Olympic gold medals till 1980,” said Prabhu.
