New Delhi, India

Savia Punia-led Indian women's hockey team lost to Australia in the penalty shootout in the CWG 2022 semi-finals, due to clock controversy. Despite a heartbreaking loss to the Aussies in the semis, Punia & Co. locked horns with New Zealand in their bronze medal face-off and returned with a 2-1 win in the penalties to win a CWG medal after 16 years.

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Thus, this became Indian women's team's first-ever bronze medal at the Games, following a gold medal in Manchester 2002 and silver in Melbourne 2006. While India didn't attain gold, they would be happy to not return empty-handed after missing out on bronze by a whisker in Tokyo 2020.

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After their historic triumph over the Kiwis, India women's team were greeted by their men's counterpart and received a guard of honour from Manpreet Singh-led line-up. Here's the video, which was shared by the official Twitter handle of Hockey India:

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"Of course, we deserved something else but we are not returning empty hands. After the defeat against Australia, the players were obviously sad but we had yesterday to motivate ourselves. We knew today's match wasn't going to be easy because New Zealand is a good team. We knew the score would be close and the match could go in a shootout. So we were ready for all possibilities.

"After the defeat against Australia, the players were obviously sad but we had yesterday to motivate ourselves. We knew today's match wasn't going to be easy because New Zealand is a good team. We knew the score would be close and the match could go in a shootout. So we were ready for all possibilities," Punia told India Today.

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Meamwhile, Manpreet-led Indian men's team faced Australia in the CWG 2022 final on Monday, where they were thrashed 7-0 to settle for their third silver overall at the Games.