India dominated the International Hockey Federation’s (FIH) annual awards on Wednesday with five players and the head coaches of the men’s and women’s teams bagging the top awards in various categories.
Indian players and coaches dominated the FIH Hockey Stars Awards 2020-21 due to the Indian men’s team’s historic bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympic Games and the women’s team’s unmatched performance.
Gurjit Kaur (Women) and Harmanpreet Singh (Men) bagged the Khiladi of the Year (Player of the Year) awards in their respective categories.
Savita Poonia (Best Goalkeeper, Women), PR Sreejesh (Best Goalkeeper, Men), Sharmila Devi (Best Rising Star, Women) and Vivek Prasad (Best Rising Star, Men) as well as India women’s team coach Sord Marin and Men’s team head coach Graham Reid also topped with the most vote.
Reid remains with the team while Marin’s tenure ended at the same time as the Tokyo Games.
The votes of the national federations were counted as 50 percent of the total result. The national associations were represented by their respective national captains and coaches. Apart from this, the final decision was taken on the basis of votes of fans and players (25 percent) and media (25 percent).
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A total of 79 national associations took part in the vote, the FIH statement said. These include 11 out of 25 members in Africa, 29 out of 33 in Asia, 19 out of 42 in Europe, three out of eight in Oceania and 17 out of 30 in Pan America.
It said, “Record 300,000 fans voted. Fan participation at the FIH Hockey Stars Awards was unmatched.”
