Amstelveen: India’s lacklustre show at the World Cup has followed a pattern that has become familiar to hockey aficionados. Yet again, the men’s team has faltered at the global stage: fluffed the lines, squandered chances galore and came a cropper in plugging holes in the defence.
The team left the Indian shores promising the moon – a return to the World Cup podium 51 years after the title-winning show of 1975 in Kuala Lumpur.
To the best of their ability, the players tried to match the rivals in speed, created some goal scoring opportunities and tried to put up a defensive structure that would blunt the rival raids.
What transpired was a dismal show, where faltered after a promising start. Scoring chances went abegging as the strikers were either slow in having a crack at the goal or unable to negotiate crowded circles. At the other end, the Indian defensive structure crumbled and even conceded soft goals.
Nervous defenders in their own circle and shaky trapping by strikers upfront meant India were seen as fumblers. The rivals made full use of the shortcoming to decimate the Indian challenge, leaving them to play for the seventh place against Belgium, the 2018 World champions who are facing their own demons after finishing at the bottom of the second stage round-robin league.
Two years after the second successive Olympic bronze medal, India had arrived in Amstelveen with the hopes of ending the medal drought. The hype was a bit overbearing, considering the lacklustre show of the Indian team this year, including an 8-0 drubbing by Argentina in the FIH Pro League.
Does the eventual show seem like a replay of the 2023 World Cup on India’s home turf! Played in the aftermath of another bronze-winning show at the Tokyo Olympics, the 2023 World Cup at Bhubaneswar and Rourkela left India blushing as they failed to make the quarterfinals. Captain Harmanpreet’s efforts of seeking redemption in The Netherlands also failed, despite emerging as India’s highest scorer.
For the umpteenth time in the past decade – since Harmanpreet’s emergence as a fine penalty corner flicker on the eve of the 2016 Olympic Games – India’s goal-scoring is mainly dependent on this lone quality flicker in the squad. This over-dependence of Harmanpreet reduces his prowess as rivals defences plan to take the sting out of his penalty corner shots since they are quite sure that the ball will be pushed toward him for the corner hit.
Despite coach Craig Fulton claiming that India now had several other penalty corner shooters – Sanjay, Jugraj Singh, Amit Rohidas and Rajinder Singh to support him, Harmanpreet still carried most of the burden. He emerged as India’s highest scorer, shooting six out of India’s 14 goals, two of which were penalty stroke conversions by Hardik Singh, while Sanjay also contributed a penalty corner goal.
The strikers were again not able to contribute much in terms of field goals. Just five goals in as many matches came from the sticks of Abhishek (two), Sukhjeet Singh (two) and Dilpreet Singh.
In contrast, the rivals seemed to have feted on India’s shaky defence, which conceded 12 out of 16 goals in open field play despite India boasting of a stout defence that would earn India another place on the podium.
The impregnable defence that coach Fulton claimed to have built betrayed gaps that the rivals were easy to penetrate. This event was not the first time where lazy starts had seen the Indian defence crumble early. If any lessons had been learnt, they were not evident in this World Cup.
Falling back to defend often conceded vital midfield territory and India’s hopes were still dashed as the defensive structure crumbled one match after another.
All coach Fulton could say was that “we committed silly mistakes”.
The Indian team will quickly need to recover from the disappointing show of Amstelveen as it still has an important task coming up next month.
India will need to shape up to defend the Asian Games gold medal at Nagoya to secure direct qualification for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.