PR Sreejesh's career around the time that the Indian men's hockey team, and indeed the sport of hockey itself in the country, had seemingly met its demise. Obituaries were being written for the Indian hockey team, winners of eight gold medals, six of which came on the trot, when they failed to make it to the Beijing Olympics. From amid the rubble of that failure began an often rocky journey for the men's team that culminated in them winning their first Olympic medal since 1980 in Tokyo in 2021.

Sreejesh was with the Indian team throughout that journey. Rarely has one player's career been an outline for an important period in a team's history but that is the case with the 36-year-old goalkeeper, who announced that he will retire after the 2024 Paris Olympics. Here, we take a look at the three Olympics that Sreejesh has taken part in thus far and how he and the Indian team fared in those.

London 2012: Having made his debut for the senior national team in 2006, Sreejesh became a first team regular around 2010. His Olympic debut came at London 2012, but this turned out to be another disappointing chapter in the history of Indian hockey rather than a remarkable turnaround from not qualifying in 2008. India lost all of their group stage matches and finished with 11 goals for and 22 against. They then lost to South Africa in the match for eleventh place and thus finished bottom of the pile.

Rio 2016: The disaster of the 2012 Olympics was followed by a bit of an upheaval and Sreejesh emerged as the leading figure in the Indian dressing room. They had qualified after winning theif first Asian Games gold medal in 16 years just two years after London 2012 and then followed it up with a bronze medal at the 2015 FIH Hockey World League Final, their first international medal in 33 years. Sreejesh was made captain ahead of the 2016 Olympics and India recorded two wins in the group stage to go through to the quarterfinals, a marked improvement from what they did in London. They then lost to eventual silver medallists Belgium and finished eighth.

Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021): India came into these Olympics being recognised as one of the best in the world but also prone to spectacular implosions, like the one in the final of the 2018 Asian Games semi-finals against the much lower-ranked which led to them failing to make it to the gold medal match. Their campaign in Tokyo started off with a 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Australia which did little to allay those fears. However, India turned it around quite spectacularly in the group stage and finished second to Australia, having won all of the matches they played after the forgettable opener. Sreejesh's voice was arguably the most prominent in the empty stadiums in which the Tokyo Olympics were played amid Covid-19 as India beat Great Britan 3-1 to reach the semi-finals for the first time since 1972. They then lost to eventual gold medallists Belgium but India then managed to come back from 3-1 down in a rollercoaster bronze medal match against Germany to win it 5-4. Sreejesh thus managed to get his hands on an Olympic medal and Indian fans got to see their hockey team come back with the elusive trinket hanging around their necks for the first time since 1980.

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