Coming back to life

Prabhjot Singh

Tribune News Service

Putting aside their golden past, India start their campaign in the 12th World Cup at the historic Major Dhyan Chand National Hockey Stadium here tomorrow as underdogs with defending champions Germany and runners-up Australia as pre-tournament favourites.

It is after a gap of 28 years that India is playing host to 12 top teams of the globe in this 38-match mega event that brings them face to face with their traditional arch rivals and neighbours Pakistan in the opener.

Interestingly, in the 1986 World Cup in Willesden, England, India and Pakistan fought each other to avoid the wooden spoon. Unfortunately, India lost the game and took the wooden spoon. And the subsequent edition of the World Cup saw Pakistan emerging like a Phoenix to end losing to Jan Floris Bovelander’s penalty strikes in the final. From 11th in 1986 to silver medal in 1990 was a no mean achievement for Pakistan.

Will India, who had finished 11th in the 11th World Cup at Munchengladbach in Germany in 2006, be able to repeat what Pakistan had then in 1990? It is a million rupee question, answer to which will be partially available after the last game of the first day on Sunday. One hopes Holi will prove lucky for the home team.

Otherwise, India’s immediate past record against Pakistan is far from encouraging as they had lost the Champions Challenge game 3-6 besides losing the gold medal match to Pakistan in the just concluded SAF Asian games in Dhaka.

Though the hosts had been in a thick of controversies for the past six weeks, yet the performance of their team in practice games against Argentina and the Netherlands had ended in identical 2-1 wins for them. It must have warmed the cockles of hearts of ardent hockey followers throughout the country and even overseas.

Playing before the home crowd on a Sunday and a ‘Holi’ day puts India at a slight advantage against a team that has world’s top scorer in Sohail Abbas. His lethal penalty corner strikes are all that India has to defend. In case they manage to do that, start could be on a positive note.

If one looks back at the history of Indo-Pak encounters, they had been played right from the gold medal match to the wooden medal match. While in 1975, India defeated Pakistan to win its only gold in the World Cup, London, as mentioned above was the nadir for both these teams.

Pakistan is the only team to have won the World Cup four times. And the last time was 16 years ago in Sydney where it had defeated the Netherlands in penalty shootout after 1-1 draw.

And in the last World Cups, the gold medal match had been between Germany and Australia with the former remaining victor on both occasions. Australia’s solitary World Cup triumph was in Willesden, England in 1986, while Netherlands is at number two having won this coveted Cup three times, including 1973 in Amstelveen, 1990 in Lahore and 1998 at Utrecht. Interestingly, the Netherlands and the Germany have been the only countries, who as hosts have been gold medal winners. Spain, England and Pakistan as hosts ended with silver medals.