K ARUMUGAM

One slip. One bad day. A heavy price to pay. For nearly two decades, the Indian men’s hockey team has been the top-ranked side in Asia. The Indian women, too, enjoyed a similar standing for more than a decade before Alyson Annan’s China emerged as the dominant force in recent years. Yet, surprisingly, this sustained supremacy has not translated into Asian Games dominance.

The men have won the Asian Games title only twice in the last six editions — in 2014 and 2022 — while the women have yet to win the gold medal in the new millennium. The contrast between ranking and Asian Games returns tells a story of missed opportunities, narrow margins and, perhaps, what may be called the “one-slip syndrome.”

Two years before the new millennium dawned, Indian hockey appeared to be on the threshold of a new era. At Bangkok in 1998, Dhanraj Pillay’s men finally captured the elusive Asian Games gold, while Pritam Rani led the women to their first-ever Asian Games final. The 1982 edition, which India won, had been played on a round-robin format.

There was a feeling that Indian hockey might finally establish the kind of Asian Games dominance Pakistan had enjoyed in the 1970s.

India beat Japan 8-0 in the pool but later managed only Bronze while the Japanese went on to win the Gold.

It was not to be.

Nothing illustrates the danger of one bad day better than Jakarta in 2018. India’s men went through the pool stage in commanding fashion, beating every opponent, including eventual champions Japan by an astonishing 8-0. Yet when the knockout stage arrived, the slip came at precisely the wrong moment.

Malaysia overcame India in the semi-final shoot-out.

The irony was striking. India’s great strength at the time was goalkeeper PR Sreejesh — and he was under the bar in that decisive shoot-out, while also leading the team. Yet India failed to cross the final hurdle.

It was a historic exit for a team that had looked almost unbeatable until that one match.

The same pattern had surfaced in 2010, when Malaysia again became India’s nemesis in the semi-final. Doha offered another painful example. India lost to emerging China in the pool stage and, for the first time in its Asian Games history, failed to enter the final or finish among the top two.

India normally beat Malaysia but faltered twice in the recent Asian Games

The women’s story, too, carries similar reminders that dominance on paper does not guarantee a gold medal.

Losing an Asian Games final is understandable. The opponent has reached the same stage and is also playing at full intensity. But defeats in crucial knockout matches — such as the semi-final exits in 2010 and 2018, and the failure to make the top two in Doha — inevitably dent the image of a team that has otherwise been regarded as Asia’s leading force.

The numbers underline the point.

India at the Asian Games in the new millennium:
Played: 6 — 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022
Won: 2 — 2014 and 2022
Semi-final entries: 5

Compare that with Pakistan’s remarkable Asian Games record when it dominated the continent in the 1970s: five consecutive titles.

India has often been ranked above its Asian rivals and has produced convincing victories, including against Pakistan. But ranking supremacy and Asian Games supremacy are not the same thing.

The lesson is simple: do not allow one-match syndrome to strike.

Until the crown is decided, no team can afford to think it is already king of Asia.

For India, the mantra should be simple:

Be careful.
Be careful.
Be careful.