India was stunned by New Zealand and was knocked out of the tournament. Indian skills (dribbling, trapping, scooping, passing) were grade A, speed, stamina and fitness grade A, experience and exposure to international matches grade A, resources and best available coaching staff grade A, and even penalty corner performance until this tournament was grade A. Then how can 5th ranked India lose to New Zealand (ranked 12th), which itself was struggling in this tournament?
Why was there a sudden collapse in the last 20 min? Why did we leave defense exposed in NZ’s first two goals? Why not pack the penalty circle with ALL players when leading by two goals? When the entire stadium knew that the ball would be scooped by NZ directly in the penalty area to get the penalty corner (just before the last goal), why was there no one-to-one marking at both ends? Why that crazy shot by Harmanpreet on the verge of winning the shootout? With so many resources poured in, why was there no mental conditioning coach? Why should Hardik’s and Shreejesh’ injuries matter so much? Why the best player award winner of the world Harmanpreet has not been able to score on even one penalty corner out of 25 (one he scored was when the goalkeeper was not present). Why, why, why? There are no answers. Only a devastating knockout! Right here in Bhubaneshwar in a sold-out stadium! This will be the fourth worst performance at best by India in the world cup history!
What could be the answers to the question “why?” Here are my thoughts:
- Pressure to perform at home, especially after a superb Olympics performance. There are so many advertisements on TV “अभी नहीं तो कभी नहीं” (If we do not win now, then we will never win)
- Too much reliance on Penalty corners (PCs) that did not work in this tournament. PCs have not been unsuccessful for many teams in this tournament. Everybody is figuring out the defense against PCs, by sometimes employing very innovative tactics, such as two-men-rush by Korea.
- Lack of mental conditioning coach
- Grass root level mentality to work individually through less passes, compared to the European teams’ mentality.
- Unfortunate challenges such as missing penalty stroke by Harmanpreeet against Spain, whose performance was impacted after that incident, Hardik’s injury, Shreejesh’ injury when he was defending penalty shoot-out well, and pressure of captaincy on Harmanpreet.
some of you may have woken up to Hockey recently. If you remember the golden era of the 1960s, you may blame modern hockey for India’s debacle. If you remember disgusting performances of the 1980s, you may say, “Here we go again!” But what you may not know is that India won Olympics bronze in 2020 with 12 of 18 players still in the team. You may not know that Harmanpreet has been the best player in the world for the last two years due to his amazing penalty corner performance (with 33% efficiency). That is why this loss is inexplicable. I guess it is time to move on.
Except Germany beating France, all other three crossovers went to penalty shootout and were won by the third-place finishers in the pool. Notably, Argentina was knocked out by Korea. Argentina and India knocked out even after leading by two goals in their respective matches. So, now there are eight teams in the quarterfinals. Belgium, England, Netherlands and Australia since they topped the pool, and Spain, Korea, New Zealand and Germany by winning the cross overs. Quarter finals begin today. Have fun (now that there is no pressure to follow India’s performance)!
