Indian men's and women's hockey teams achieve best-ever world rankings

The Indian mens and womens hockey teams jumped one spot each to achieve their highestever world rankings at number 3 and 8 respectively riding on their historic campaign at the Tokyo OlympicsThe Indian mens team which ended a 41yearold medal drought by clinching a historic bronze in the Olympics was placed behind goldmedallist Belgium and silvermedallist Australia Its the reward of all the hard work and dedication towards the game we love towards the game which has given us everything said Indian mens team captain Manpreet Singh in a release issued by Hockey IndiaThis ranking and the Olympic medal after 41 years mark the rise of Indian Hockeythere is no looking back now we have set the benchmark for ourselves and would like to grow from here While the mens side claimed the bronze the womens team narrowly missed out a medal after going down to Great Britain in the hardfought thirdplace playoff to end at the fourth placeWe were very close to finishing on the podium and it is hurting the team that we didnt However looking at the bright side we have made remarkable progress in recent years and I am really proud of it womens team skipper Rani Rampal said Finishing in the top four at Olympics and climbing to the 8th position in world rankings is a very big thing for us and this has boosted our confidence it will certainly help us grow going forwardIndian womens hockey players in action during Tokyo Olympics PicPTIManpreet and Co had finished second in Pool A winning four out of five group phase matches and defeated Great Britain 31 in the quarterfinal before losing 25 against Belgium in their historic semifinal However they staged a remarkable comeback to grab a 54 win over Germany to clinch a historic bronze medal at Olympic Games and as a result climbed up to their bestever world rankingAlso Read Tokyo 2020 lsquoIndian menrsquos hockey bronze win made me think of the 1980 finalrsquoI must admit I feel privileged to have played a part in the rise of Indian Hockey Its a great feeling that we won the historic Bronze Medal as well as achieving the highest ranking on the back of our solid performance in the Olympics Indian mens team chief coach Graham Reid saidWe played like a unit with the right kind of attitude and I think that has helped the team achieve this feat After suffering three losses in the initial phase the womens team pulled off arguably its biggest upset by beating world number 3 Australia in what was its firstever quarterfinal of the OlympicsHowever the womens team lost both the semifinal and the bronze medal playoff match against Argentina and Great Britain respectively Outgoing Indian womens team chief coach Sjoerd Marijne said Achieving 8th rank in the world ranking and finishing among the top four at Olympics is a big step for Indian Womens hockey and I think every team will definitely take us seriouslyThe athletes have that desire to learn and improve each and every day and I feel this is one of the biggest reasons why we could finish among the top four The mens team was ranked No4 in March last year on the back of their scintillating performances in the first three rounds of the second edition of FIH Hockey Pro LeagueOn the other hand the women teams earlier highest world ranking was 9th which they accomplished by producing their best finish quarterfinals at the World Cup in London in 2018 Having reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup the womens team had become the topranked Asian team and went on to clinch the silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games in JakartaThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever