Bharat Chetri to lead Indian Hockey team in Olympics

Hockey India on Monday announced the squad for the London Olympics, starting July 27. Goalkeeper Bharat Chetri will lead the team and Sardara Singh will be his deputy.

The team has 16 players and there will be two standby players who can join the team if there is any serious injury. They will stay with the team in the Olympic Village.

Before finalizing this list a selection trial was conducted at Balewadi Sports Complex in Pune on 6th and 7th June 2012.

The trials were monitored by Hockey India selectors B P Govinda and Col Balbir Singh along with Chief Coach Michael Nobbs, Coach Mohd Riaz. Exercise Physiologist David John and Government observer Harbinder Singh were also present there.

India is in Pool B along with Germany, Korea, New Zealand, Belgium and Netherlands. India will start its campaign on 30th July against Netherlands.

Eight-time Olympics Champions India will be in tremendous pressure as they failed to even qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

All the matches will be played on the blue artificial turf with yellow kookaburra balls at Riverbank Arena of the Olympic Park.


Before the Olympics Indian team is scheduled to stay for three weeks in France and Spain. The Chetri-led team will leave on 26th June to play test matches and a Three-Nation Invitational Tournament to finalize their Olympic preparations.

The team is as under with two standby players-

Goalkeepers

1Bharat Chetri(Captain)

2 P R Sreejesh

Full Backs

3 V R Raghunath

4 Ignace Tirkey

5 Sandeep Singh

Half Backs

6 Sardar Singh(Vice Captain)

7 Gurbaj Singh

8 Birendra Lakra

9 Manpreet Singh

Forwards

10 S.V Sunil

11Gurwinder Singh Chandi

12 Shivendra Singh

13 Danish Mujtaba

14 Tushar Khandker

15 Dharamvir Singh

16 S. K Uthappa

Standby

17 Sarvanjit Singh

18 Kothajit Singh