Picture Credit: Twitter
In what comes as a big news surrounding Indian Hockey, star defender Harmanpreet Singh has been named the FIH Player of the Year for the second successive time. With this, he now also holds the distinction of becoming only the fourth player to win the Player of the Year award (men's category) in back-to-back years with the earlier members of this elite club being Teun De Nooijer (Netherlands), Jamie Dwyer (Australia) and Arthur van Doren (Belgium).
"Harmanpreet Singh is a bona fide modern-day hockey superstar. He is a terrific defender with a knack for being at the right place at the right time to breakdown the opponent’s offense," FIH said in a statement. "He has great dribbling skills to carry the ball up the field from defense. And he scores goals, goals and more goals! To add to that impressive resume, he has now been voted the FIH Player of the Year, for the second year running.” it added.
On the back of a stupendous run, Harmanpeet accumulated a total of 29.4 points and he was closely followed by Thierry Brinkmann who had a total of 23.6 points and Tom Boon who had a total of 23.4 points. Harmanpreet scored 18 goals from 16 games with the help of 18 goals from 16 games with hat-tricks in the FIH Pro League 2021-22. These stats meant he ended the season as the top scorer for India.
The 26-year-old had also been in great form in the Asian Champions Trophy last year in Bangladesh where he netted as many as 8 goals in 6 matches, managing to score in every single game during India's podium finish. He also starrted in India's silver medal winning run at the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham.