In fits of nostalgia Indians mock the decline of the national men’s hockey team. Then suddenly, when the team has a few wins, stories of new prowess and medal hunts inundate the media. At one moment Indian hockey players appear as hallucinatory figures with divine powers, and at another, they become real earthlings without a structure in their play. In the process, the sport becomes the victim of wild opinion swings.
Unfortunately, there is so much emotion surrounding Indian hockey that we need Buddha-like minds to put things in perspective. What really is happening to India’s hockeyIJ Has it finally found that elusive structureIJ As a follower of Indian hockey, let me put a few issues in focus.
First, there is slow improvement in the structure. India is no longer the team whose play oscillates between the sublime and the ridiculous, as the Australian hockey player Jamie Dwyer has observed. Consider that a good defensive structure is the key to success. This point has soaked into the marrow of the players, although consistent results remain elusive.
Remember that India stood last after losing all games in the 2012 london Olympics. Can there be a worse resultIJ India has already reached its nadir in Olympics performance and can only go up from there. But reality is complex. The irony is that even this spectacular statistical failure was an improvement over not even qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Since 2012, India has made a steady ascension, stooping, back- pedaling and slipping, but rising to move on, keeping the ascent in sight. This is a kind of forbearance that deserves appreciation. Improving the rank from 8th to 6th is no mean feat.
India won the 2014 Asian Games gold medal after 16 years, the 3rd gold medal win in 15 attempts. They had back-to-back 4th place finishes at the Champions Trophy in 2012 and 2014, surely noteworthy considering it had failed to qualify for the tournament since 2005. Between January 2014 and now, India has had victories over world number 1 and world champions Australia (4 times), 2nd ranked the Netherlands (once), 3rd ranked Germany (once), 4th ranked Belgium (twice), 5th ranked Great Britain (once), and the then higher-ranked Korea (3 times).
India is beginning to improve against Pakistan, with a 25- 32 win-loss record in the 21st century, even though the overall win- loss statistics remains 54- 80. In recent years the Indians have found a way to get under the skins of the Pakistanis, something that eluded them in the past. In the second decade of the 21st century, even if India has not been able to pull ahead decisively, it maintains the edge. Consider that, in contrast to India, Pakistan did not qualify for the 2014 World Cup or the 2016 Olympics.
let us now look at the World league. In the 2012- 2013 season, India stood 6th in the semifinals and qualified for the finals only because it was the host. But India has qualified for the finals of the 2014- 2015 cycle on the strength of its 4th place finish in the semifinals. This shows that the gold medal in the2014 Asian Games was no flash in the pan. If India had failed to qualify for the Olympics through the continental qualification route, the 4th place finish in the World league semifinals would have been enough to do so as well.
In our worshipful obsession with men’s hockey we should never forget the women’s team. For far too long the women have been the junior partners in this improvement enterprise. Why should that be the case when the women work as hard as the menIJ If anything, their performance has been even better than that of the men, considering their world ranking is only 13th, while the men’s is 6th. Besides, the women have had fewer opportunities than the men for tough match play. In 2014 the women played only two major tournaments: the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games.
The qualification of the Indian women’s team for the Rio Olympics is a greater achievement than their participation in the 1980 Moscow Olympics - an invitational tournament with a depleted field after a boycott by the West. They have now qualified for the Olympics on the strength of performance.
Statistics don’t lie. The women stood 7th in the World league semifinals in 2013, and improved to 5th place in 2015. Since 2014 the senior women’s team has held world number 2 Australia, beaten 9th-ranked Germany (once), 14th-ranked Spain (once) and 10th-ranked Japan (thrice). For the first time ever, India won a bronze medal at the 2013 Junior Women’s World Cup. The senior women won a bronze medal in the 2014 Asian Games.
The facts should nail the cynics. The reality is that the senior men’s team has delivered notable performances, while the women’s team is beginning to do justice to its talent. Had it not been for the fatigue resulting from playing a series of tough tournaments, the men might have performed better in 2014.
Surely the credit for this should go to Hockey IndiaIJ Firstly, it has turned the financial equation in world hockey upside down. By introducing the lucrative Hockey India league it has made India an attractive venue for major tournaments such as the World Cup, the World league Finals, the Champions Trophy and the Junior World Cup.
Flush with the Santa Claus effect Hockey India has enough global influence to secure for India invitations for major tournaments, such as the Hawke’s Bay Tournament for women in 2015, and the Volvo Cup for Junior Men and Women in 2015. Despite being five places lower in world ranking, Hockey India secured an agreement with Hockey Australia for annual test series between the men’s teams.
All this means that both the men’s and women’s teams, seniors and juniors, get a chance to play the world’s top- ranked teams on a regular basis. There is no better way for the game’s development. Maybe the time will come when India’s hockey players are no longer misty figures surrounded by halos from a successful past, but solid and real men and women moving up the ladder. We can wish the men’s team good luck for the World league Finals.
Jitendra Nath Misra is an Indian Foreign Service officer and is currently India’s ambassador to Portugal. These are his personal views, not those of the government.