HOCKEY lovers of the city celebrated India’s bronze medal-winning performance at the Tokyo Olympics on Thursday. Indian men defeated Germans 5-4 in a nine-goal thrilling bronze medal match at Oi Hockey Stadium in Japan. The medal wait in Olympics was finally over after 41 years for India who had won their last medal, a gold, at Moscow Olympics in 1980. City hockey lovers wasted no time in celebrating the occasion. They gathered in front of Vidarbha Hockey Association (VHA) ground and distributed sweets. They also danced to Bhangra tunes and congratulated each other waving the tricolour.

 

They said that hockey has got back its lost glory. “Hockey will now reach new heights. The team has brought back the lost glory. It’s time to build on this medal-winning performance of the men’s team. We should all work together to develop hockey at grassroot.” Some of the hockey lovers felt that it will now be the right time to invest in grooming budding players. “The interest among the budding players as well as their parents will be back now after this superb win. We should now start investing in budding players. This will be the right time to promote hockey at schools,” they said. Former VHA joint secretary Pramod Jain, former Vice President AP Joshi, Parvez Qureshi, Anil Daral, Gurpreet Singh, Sunil Madne, Kunal Patil, Corporator Kishor Jichkar, Prakash Wankhede, Javed Khan, Pramod Thakur, Sandeep Gurghate, Yugal Vidavat, Om Tiwaskar, and others were present on the occasion.