India on Friday announced both the men's and women's teams for the upcoming FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers which are scheduled to take place at the Kalinga Hockey Stadium in Bhubaneswar.
Manpreet Singh will lead the men's team while Rani Rampal will captain the women's team. SV Sunil and Savita will be their respective deputies.
In the two-legged qualifiers on where world number five Indian men's team will be up against world number Russia, while world number nine Indian women's team will face world number 13 USA.
"After a good preparation tour in Belgium, it was always going to be a very difficult decision to pick the best 18 players for this tournament. We have chosen a well-balanced side with a number of good flexible options. We now need to focus on strategies against Russia, and ensure we are at our best when we step onto the field on 1st and 2nd November," Reid said in a statement.
Sjoerd Marijne, chief coach of the women's team, said: "We have retained the 18-member team from our preparatory tour of England. We have a good balance and mixture of players in the squad, and keeping in mind our objective of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics 2020, I feel it is important to stay in the rhythm with the same players who performed well in the preparatory tour. We now focus on making sure that we leave no stone unturned when we take on USA in the two matches."
Men's Team: PR Sreejesh, Krishan Bahadur Pathak, Harmanpreet Singh, Varun Kumar, Surender Kumar, Gurinder Singh, Rupinder Pal Singh, Amit Rohidas, Manpreet Singh (Captain), Nilakanta Sharma, Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, SV Sunil (Vice-Captain), Mandeep Singh, Akashdeep Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Simranjeet Singh.
Women's Team: Savita (Vice-Captain), Rajani Etimarpu, Deep Grace Ekka, Gurjit Kaur, Reena Khokhar, Salima Tete, Sushila Chanu Pukhrambam, Nikki Pradhan, Monika, Neha Goyal, Lilima Minz, Namita Toppo, Rani (Captain), Vandana Katariya, Navneet Kaur, Lalremsiami, Navjot Kaur, Sharmila Devi
The winners will be determined as follows:
- Teams with most points (3 for win, 1 for draw, 0 for lose);
- If points are equal, goal difference will decide;
- If points and goal difference are equal, penalty shoot-out will decide the winner.
The hockey competitions at 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be held from 25 July to 7 August next year in Tokyo.
