Mahindra Scorpio TOISA: Indian junior hockey team voted Team of the Year

MUMBAI: The India team which won the 2016 Junior Hockey World Cup has emerged as the winner the TOISA Team of the Year at the Mahindra Scorpio Times of India Sports Awards held in Mumbai on Monday.
Under the captaincy of Harjeet Singh, the Indian colts lifted the World Cup for the first time in 15 years, beating Belgium 2-1 in the final in Lucknow. Mandeep Singh, Harmanpreet Singh and Simranjeet Singh were the leading goal-scorers with three each, followed by Varun Kumar and Gurjant Singh with two apiece.
In October, the team had won the Four-Nations Invitational Tournament in Valencia, Spain when it crushed Germany 5-2 with goals from Parvinder Singh, Armaan Qureshi, Gurjant, Varun and Anand Lakra. In the Australian Hockey League, also featuring teams from New Zealand and Malaysia, India reached the semi-finals. The star performers for the team were Varun with seven goals, including a hat-trick, and Armaan with four.
To win the award ahead of the senior men's hockey team, which last year beat Pakistan to win the Asian Champions Trophy for the second time, claimed India's first silver medal at the Champions Trophy, bronze at the Four Nations Invitational Tournament in Australia and reached the quarter-finals of the Olympics for the first time since 1980, and India's Test cricket team speaks volumes of the esteem in which the five-member TOISA jury valued the colts' performances.
The chairman of the TOISA jury, former India Olympic gold medal-winning captain Zafar Iqbal, said of the junior hockey team's success in 2016: "To win a World Cup was the biggest aspect of the team's success, and that it came after such a long gap was very encouraging for Indian hockey. It was a huge and rare achievement and that for us was the biggest factor in determining which team was the most promising."
Added jury member Rajesh Kalra, the Chief Editor of Times Internet and member of the PM's task force on the preparations for the next three Olympics: "The fact that the junior team won the World Cup after 15 years and that this was a genuine world event was important, and what swung the vote was the number of international teams that play the sport."
India's Test team, captained by Virat Kohli, remained unbeaten all year, winning nine and drawing three matches. It rose to No 1 in the ICC Test Championship twice and has stayed top since October, winning three consecutive Test series against West Indies, New Zealand and England. During this period, Kohli's team broke the previous Indian record of most Tests without defeat (17).
Also nominated were the men's kabaddi team which won the World Cup in Ahmedabad, beating Iran 38-29 in the final to make it a hat-trick of World Cup titles for India, and the senior men's basketball team.
Team India hosted the South Asia Qualifiers for the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Asia Challenge and defended their title, backed that up with their best performance in 27 years at the FIBA Asian Challenge in Iran, beating China, Philippines, Chinese Taipei and Kazakhstan to reach the quarter-finals, and ended the year by claiming bronze medal at Hong Kong's Super Kung Sheung Cup. The success of the men's basketball was formed around the trio of Amjyot Singh, Amritpal Singh, and Vishesh Bhriguvanshi who established themselves as Asia's elite.