The Tribune:With method, India show steady rise
Indervir Grewal
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 13
For the second year in a row, the international hockey caravan made an unlikely city in India its final stop of the year.
While it was a 6000-capacity stadium in Bhubaneshwar last year (for the Champions Trophy), this time the site for the eight-team Hockey World League Final was a small 3000-capacity stadium in Raipur.
And for India the similarities didn’t end there — this year too, Roelant Oltmans found himself at the helm of the host team after another unceremonious departure of a coach. Last year it was Australian Terry Walsh who had left, and this year it was Dutchman Paul van Ass.
As India’s campaign in the tournament progressed, it seemed that the hosts were heading for a repeat of last year. After losing two of their three matches in the pool, just like last year, India managed to beat a higher-ranked European team in the quarterfinals, before falling in the semifinals. And, as India fell behind 0-2 against the Netherlands in the third-place match, it seemed that for the third time in 12 months they would miss out on the opportunity to win their first medal at the world level in three decades.
Last year, India reached the semifinals of the Champions Trophy, followed by a semifinals appearance at the HWL Semifinals earlier this year. The structure of these tournaments, in which all the teams reach the quarters, has helped India. However, the gradual progress of the team, which helped it rise to world No. 6, can’t be ignored.
Consistency through structure
In the last two years, starting from before the 2014 World Cup, India have rarely lost to lower-ranked teams — the two losses to Pakistan, in the league stage of the Asian Games and the semifinals of the Champions Trophy are the only ones that come to mind. And they have been able to beat or hold higher-ranked teams — Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, New Zealand — in FIH tournaments. And even in most of their losses, they have put up a decent fight.
Behind this change and performing at a higher level consistently has been the discipline and structure brought into the Indian game by the foreign coaches. The work done by the physical trainers brought from abroad can’t be ignored as India is currently among the world’s fittest teams. There have been set-backs, with the constant change of coaches, but the team has made steady progress.
This discipline helped them win the Asian Games gold; currently India is arguably the best team in Asia. They won the CWG silver after beating the Kiwis in the semis. What had eluded them was a medal at a world-level tournament.
India have become structurally sound enough to consistently beat weaker and equal teams. But they have not yet been able to replicate that success against the top teams. And it would be unfair to expect it from players who were brought up playing a completely different, obsolete, style. The Indians adopted the modern style only three to four years back and it is limited to only the national team; for over a decade before that, Indian hockey went through a lot of changes — coaches were changed too frequently and all of them experimented with the team. The players of the top hockey nations, however, grow up in a uniform system; they are almost regimented.
The Indian players are not tactically mature enough — a big example is that they don’t know how to control the pace of the game; changing the pace helps disrupt the opposition’s rhythm and structure, but every time India do it, they lose their own structure.
But what lets India down most is their inability to hold the defensive structure for the whole game and the top teams take advantage of this weakness much more easily than the lower-ranked teams. India’s current defenders are physically, technically and tactically not up to the top international level. But they alone can’t be blamed; the forwards and midfielders are guilty of often being found out of position, or getting beaten very easily, or giving away possession cheaply.
At the HWL Final, India played four pretty solid games — against Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Belgium — but won one, drew one and lost two. In all the games they matched the Europeans in possession and attacks. But it was those few errors they made that that let them down. Against Belgium in the semis, it was just that one error early on. Afterwards, they had a very good game but couldn’t find the equaliser. It seemed that they were, in a way, handicapped by playing the organised hockey, they couldn’t truly open up, find that killer instinct, and in the end the loss seemed meek.
In the bronze medal playoff, the errors again put them behind. And for three quarters, India tried to tactically break the Dutch defence but failed. In the last quarter, India let loose, returning to the haphazard Indian hockey of old; and what followed has to be described as madness.
It will be convenient to say that it took India a bit of the old madness to break the jinx, and tempting to ask why India should not play that old style. But the fact is that it took India many failures before this success. And returning to the old ways, when India could beat any top team on their day and lose to a weaker side the next day, is not the way forward. The Netherlands win was a barrier broken and it took more heart than mind to achieve it.
But the medal doesn’t mean that India can yet be considered serious contenders at the Olympics or the World Cup. This win, over the world No. 2 side, was a huge confidence-booster. India need to maintain this level of consistency, and the more they play — it is irrelevant if they lose, draw or win as long as they try to play tactically sound hockey — against the top teams, the more mature they will become and the more they will grow in confidence.