Indian men’s hockey team beat Great Britain in the quarter-final of the Paris Olympics 2024 on Sunday against the odds of playing with only 10 players. Goalkeeper for India PR Sreejesh stood as The Great Wall of India in the penalty shootout which INDIA won by 4-2 and made it to the semi-finals against Germany in Paris Olympics 2024. Defender Amit Rohidas was given a red card in the 17th minute of the game. India will face Germany on Tuesday.
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Great Britain was in aggressive mode from the first minute of the game they had one player behind every player of India to not give them space and put a lot of pressure on the team India. This tactic resulted in Great Britain having 2 penalty corners in the starting 5 minutes of the game. By the end of quarter 1 both the teams had 3 penalty corners each with the score 0-0. Abhishek attacked the goal post of Great Britian in the q1 but it was saved by ollie Payne.
The Drama quarter
The second quarter was full of butterflies in stomach. First Amit Rohidas stick hit unintentionally to William Calnan face to the ground umpires found no foul in this but Great Britain referred this to the third umpire who stated the position of the stick was unnatural after which a red card was given to Amit Rohidas. Amit Rohidas who has dual roles he is important in defence and penalty corners was out for the remaining 43 minutes of the game and the game was now 10 Indians against 11 Great Britain.
But India got deep into the defence they almost formed three layers of defence, forward line defence, behind them were the midfielders and behind them, Sumeet and Sanjay sticking together with goalkeeper Sreejesh. India got deep into the defence after the Indian men’s hockey team captain Harmanpreet scored the first goal of the match during a penalty corner and this was his 7th goal of the tournament.
The goal from the captain made Great Britain chase and the strong defence line of the Indian team prevented Great Britain from doing they invaded 24 times the defence but were able to goal only one time by Lee Morton in the 27th minute of the game just 5 mins after Harmanpreet scored for India. By half-time, the score was 1-1 Great Britain had equalized the score and Amit Rohidas was handed a red card.
PR Sreejesh : The Great Wall of India
The frequency of attacks increased in the Indian defence in the third quarter it was back-to-back attacks from Great Britain on the defence created by the Indian hockey team but the Sreejesh didn’t give a chance to the ball to pass him. Great Britain had 7 penalty corners till the third quarter of the game and 10 penalty corners till the end of time.
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Sreejesh stood as The Great Wall of India between the net and rigorous attack by Great Britain. He was on a different level he saved every penalty corner of Great Britain.
By the end of full-time, both teams scored one goal each and the score was 1-1. It was time for a penalty shootout and was the time Sreejesh Special Show Great Britain was lucky in the first two attempts so was the team India. Lalit Kumar Upadhyay took the lead in the third attempt Great Britain missed the next two attempts It was Raj Kumar Pal who came to take the 4th attempt scored and handed over the win to India in the quarter-final of the Paris Olympics 2024. The final shootout score stands 4-2.
About Author
Devansh Das is pursuing bachelor’s in Journalism and Mass Communication from VIPS-TC. He writes on national issues and on issues which directly or indirectly concerns the interest of the public.
