Sharmila Devi played a crucial role in the Indian women's hockey team delivering a fantastic performance, during the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics.
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Indian Women’s hockey team forward Sharmila Devi has expressed her elation having been nominated for the FIH Women’s Rising Star of the Year Award. Sharmila was one of the key members of the Indian women’s hockey team that made history by achieving their best-ever result in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics. The team finished fourth, with Sharmila delivering several brilliant runs during the tournament and putting pressure on the opposition to create many goal-scoring opportunities.
“It’s a great honour to be nominated for the FIH Women’s Rising Star of the Year Award 2019-2020. It feels fantastic when your efforts and performances are recognized. I have always played to help my team win and we have always believed in collective efforts, therefore this nomination is a testament to the way the entire team has played in the last year and especially at the Tokyo Games,” she said after being nominated for the prestigious award as quoted by Hockey India.
Sharmila admitted that the women’s hockey team had experienced disappointment having failed to clinch a bronze medal. However, she is confident that the players will look to learn as much as possible from the campaign in Tokyo.
“We were very close to winning a Medal, but we couldn’t do so. It was heartbreaking for us to not close out the game against Great Britain, however, we will focus on the learnings from the tournament in the upcoming days. We have gained a lot of confidence from the way we took on the top teams in the world. We just need to fine-tune a few things and then we will certainly perform well regularly in the biggest of tournaments,” stated the 19-year-old.
Defender Gurjit Kaur and goalkeeper Savita have further been nominated for the FIH Women’s Player of the Year Award and FIH Women’s Goalkeeper of the Year Award respectively. Sharmila congratulated her teammates, hailing their performances.
“The fact that we have made the shortlist of all the categories of FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21 shows that each department of the team is contributing to the team’s success on the field. Gurjit scored some crucial goals for us in the knockout stages, the one against Australia in the Quarter-Final being the most important goal and Savita made many brilliant saves throughout the Tokyo Games. I am really happy that their performances have been recognized and would like to congratulate them for being nominated for the FIH Player of the Year Award and FIH Goalkeeper of the Year Award respectively,” she stated.
Indian hockey star Vivek Sagar Prasad was also recently nominated for the FIH Rising Star of the Year award. Prasad was a member of the historic Indian men’s hockey team that won the bronze medal in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics.
“I never imagined this would happen again. It’s a surreal feeling to have been nominated for the second time in the same category (FIH Rising Star of the Year Awards). I got to know this late in the night when I saw texts from my friends congratulating me for this. To be honest, it’s really overwhelming,” he stated.
