NO BREAKING THIS WALL
Adjudged the FIH Goalkeeper of the Year a second time, is moving from strength to strength
SSavita Punia says she remembers the moment hockey became her mission. Born in Sirsa, Haryana, she was nudged into the sport by her grandfather, Ranjeet Punia. She didn’t instantly fall in love with it. She spent the first few years protesting. Having to lug the heavy goalkeeper’s kit on rickety state buses, she dreaded the journey to and from the sports hostel.
Punia, however, quickly rose through the ranks and in 2008, aged 18, she made the India squad. “At that time, there were seven goalkeepers in the team. I never thought I could beat them to the playing XI spot,” she says. “They carried an interview with me in the newspaper after I was selected and I showed it to my grandfather. There had been a few tragedies at home and he used to be very despondent. My hockey was the one thing that made him happy.”
Her grandfather couldn’t make sense of the words at the time, but promised Punia that he would learn to read in a year. “And he kept his promise,” she says. “If he could do that for me at that age, then why was I thinking that I could never be the No. 1 goalkeeper in India? I wanted to make him feel even prouder. That’s when I became serious about hockey.”
She hasn’t let her guard down since. The 32-year-old, popularly known as the ‘Great Wall of India’, won the FIH Goalkeeper of the Year award for the second time in a row recently, becoming only the third player to do so since the awards were instituted in 2014. In a memorable year, Punia led India in a World Cup for the first time, played a key role in the team’s bronze medal finish at the 2022 Commonwealth Games— their first medal at the Games in 16 years—and pulled off 57 saves in 14 matches as India finished on the podium in their FIH Pro League debut. Punia, who has seen women’s hockey in India transform in the past few years, was the team’s rock as they sought to build on their Tokyo Olympics success.
While fan and media votes tend to slightly tip the scales in Indian players’ favour at the annual hockey awards, Punia received the highest points in each of the four categories—including experts and teams. The 8.3 points she was given by teams was almost double that of her closest competitor. “When I started, I never thought my journey would be so long,” says Punia. “Unfortunately, my grandfather, who took the biggest decision of my life, is not here to share the joy (he passed away in 2013). I have been through highs and lows, but given everything, today it gives me great joy to be a hockey player.”
Punia might not have chosen this journey, but she has clearly made it her own. ■