After the past two disappointing Olympics, Indian hockey can be satisfied with the Rio outing where Team India got into the Q/F round for the first time since 1980.
But the up and down display showed up our national game’s continuing struggles, though now in the right direction. From a disastrous non-qualification in 2008, to a low-lying 12th place finish in london 2012 to a fourth place Grouper in Rio, it’s an upward trend one would say, but as skipper Sreejesh conceded, they could have played better.
In the group stage, India managed couple of good wins (3-2 against Ireland and 2-1 against eventual champions Argentina). Adrian D'souza, a 2004 Olympian and a Star Sports expert, was satisfied with the team’s performance. “The best part is we got a direct qualification to Rio so we had two years to plan. I am pretty happy with the way team has performed, and with fine tuning we will have a better chance in future,” he added. “You have to know how to take a card when you have to take a card. In the match against Canada if we had won, then probably we would have got Spain — it would have been much different team than Belgium. You don’t see big teams taking many yellow cards,” he pointed out.
India started well in penalty corner conversions, but fell away as the tournament went on. “In penalty corner conversions we had a good start to the tournament – Rupinder Pal & Ragunath did find a goal. But later, it was disaster, especially against the Dutch when India had five penalty corners on the trot and could not convert even one,” he said.
On the positive front, D'souza was happy with the structure the team played with. “The defence was composed under pressure in all the matches. Sreejesh did an outstanding job throughout. The experience of SV Sunil defined our forward line. He may not have scored goals but his assists and getting PCs were high,” he added.
Now, Adrian said, India needs to target winning the 2018 Asian Games for a direct qualification to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.