Tragedy of Indian hockey

Uthra G Chaturvedi

It isn’t often that you beat teams like Korea, Pakistan and Japan in any Asian hockey tournament and still finish only third. But that’s the tragedy of Indian hockey – even in its best phase, it ends up often shooting itself in the foot and letting a “golden” opportunity slip by. And that’s exactly what has happened in these Asian Games.

India were among the favourites to win the title. To be fair to them, they played like one also. Winningall their league matches to top the group, they went ahead and beat defending champions Korea also in the bronze medal play-off. It’s easy to say they had only one off day; it just happened to be the most important day. Equally easily, it can be said that Indians are chokers and always stutter on the big stage; but that theory won’t be able to wish away the wins India raked up.

Perhaps the only explanation could be that the India-Pakistan match almost relieved the pressure off the Indians; and they didn’t expect Malaysia to come on so strongly, and that perhaps would be the biggest and only mistake the team made – forgetting that Malaysia have always been a thorn in India’s side, and that they had held Korea 2-2 in the league games.

It’s now back to the make-or-break Olympic qualifiers – a one-shot chance to qualify for 2012. On current form, India may well consider it unfair that they have to go through that test, but that’s how things are; on the other hand, they would do well to keep in mind that the qualifiers are in February 2012, still some time away. More importantly, there aren’t too many major events in 2011 for India. It will be tough for the team to maintain the momentum and be at their peak then, after the constant stream of competition in 2010; it would be a challenge that both the players and the team management – whoever that may comprise of – need to look at and be prepared for. A second missed Olympics may well prove to be the death-knell for Indian hockey despite a more-than-impressive outing throughout 2010 – specially when the country is finding new heroes in hitherto unknown sports every day.