It is a cruel blow for Indian hockey. Almost three years since the Indian women’s team finished fourth at the Tokyo Olympics, they suffered a devastating loss in the third-place playoff against Japan at the FIH Women’s Hockey Olympic Qualifiers in Ranchi and will miss the Paris Olympics.
While it seemed like Indian hockey and the women’s team were starting a positive chapter with their performances in Tokyo, Japan endured a tough campaign at home. The women’s team lost all their matches. Now, under head coach Jude Menezes, the former India goalkeeper, Japan have turned their fortunes around and qualified for the Paris Games with a 1-0 win over India.
We take a look at India’s takeaways from what eventually turned out to be a dismal tournament:
Inconsistent performances hamper India
In a tournament where the top three teams were guaranteed qualification for the Paris Olympics, India ended up fourth. They did not play to their strengths against the USA but did well in the next two games to win them. They lost a close semifinal against the Germans and then failed to break down Japan’s defence.
After being pretty ordinary against the USA, India found the goals, mainly through Salima Tete and Udita Duhan, to win against New Zealand and Italy. India qualified for the semifinal, but it was evident that they needed improvement, in terms of other players contributing.
They did that against Germany, where the team finally clicked as a unit. India defended well and took their chances under pressure with the match ending 2-2 in regulation time. But strangely, the team faltered in the next match against Japan where their attack and defence (at least in the first half) struggled.
India conceded two penalty corners in the opening five minutes of the first quarter and Japan scored from the second chance. Not just the goal-scoring chance, India allowed Japan to dominate in the first half, leaving plenty of open spaces in midfield and defence.
Even the best falter at crunch time
The inconsistency also came to bite arguably India’s two best players from this tournament – Salima Tete and Udita – who both had off days against Japan. Salima, whose finishing improved massively over the year, missed a golden chance in the dying minutes of the match. She had the ball inside the circle on the left, she did well to control it and went for a shot but missed the target.
There were two Indian players — Nisha Warsi and Jyothi in front of goal and ready to receive the pass but it ended up being a bad choice to shoot and a bad miss from Salima. In terms of chance creation as well, she didn’t do enough when her team needed her the most.
Udita, meanwhile, was guilty of leaving too much space behind her in the backline which allowed Japan to dominate the left side of the field. She missed a couple of her tackles in the opening quarter, which resulted in Japan entering the circle from the left and creating goal-scoring chances. While she was successful with her penalty corners in the previous matches, she failed against Japan despite multiple attempts. Eventually, India did not convert any of their nine penalty corners.
