After the Tokyo bronze, this home World Cup was supposed to propel Indian hockey even further forward. Instead, the loss to New Zealand brought to the fore very familiar failings.
On paper, New Zealand’s penalty shootout defeat of India at the Hockey World Cup isn’t a major shock. Though India were bronze medal winners at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, their world ranking of No.6 feels about right. New Zealand sit at No.10. If you’re being cruel, you could say that New Zealand have been genuine Olympic gold medallists more recently than India. After all, they saw off the world’s best to clinch gold in Montreal in 1976. When India finished atop the podium four years later in Moscow, the top five teams from Montreal and the four semifinalists from the 1978 World Cup were missing because of the US-led boycott of the games.
All that, though, is ancient history, and shouldn’t be allowed to paper over what is frankly a catastrophic result for Indian hockey. Naveen Patnaik’s Odisha government has spared no expense when it comes to promoting the sport, whether through sponsoring the teams or putting in place world-class infrastructure. Simply put, they and a passionate crowd deserved far better than this.
If Tokyo, and especially the epic victory over Germany in the bronze-medal match, was supposed to represent a major fork in the road for what was once India’s national sport, this defeat to New Zealand even before the quarterfinal stage is the metaphorical drive off the cliff. And it was so easily preventable. India led 2-0, then 3-1, and had umpteen chances to make the game safe. They didn’t. New Zealand hit back, it went to penalties, and now you have a party where the host has been locked out of the venue.
Let’s also mention that New Zealand’s Olympic gold in 1976 was very much an aberration. They have never reached the semifinals otherwise, and their best World Cup finish was 7th. In terms of popularity, the game is way behind Rugby Union, Rugby League and cricket, and the player pool is a fraction of what you’d find even in Punjab or Odisha.
Somehow though, like their other national teams, New Zealand continue to punch above their weight. Let’s not forget that they also beat India 3-2 in the semifinal at the Commonwealth Games in 2018. This was their third win against India in seven World Cup encounters. An upset? Only if you’re blinded by what happened in Tokyo.
The story of India hockey in the past four decades is not just a tale of tumbling down the rankings, and being relegated to cricket’s shadow. It’s of completely avoidable defeats to teams with next to no hockey pedigree. Seoul 1988? Defeat to the Soviet Union. The 1990 World Cup? A loss to France. A 4-1 loss to Canada at the 1998 World Cup.
Worst of all, with a semifinal spot tantalizingly within reach at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the concession of a 69th minute equaliser to Poland. If you started following the sport in the 1970s and ’80s, you probably wouldn’t even have known that Poland or France had hockey teams.
It was Canada that scuppered an Olympic campaign in 2016 as well, with a draw that meant India had to take on Belgium in the last eight. They would lose then, as they did to the Red Lions in the Tokyo semifinal. Recall too how far Belgium have come in so short a time. After winning a bronze from a four-team field in 1920, the Olympics in Rio Di Janeiro marked the first time they had made the final four since. Between 1976 and 2008 (they finished 9th both times), they didn’t even qualify.
Consider as well how much of a fringe sport hockey is in Belgium, whose population is one-fourth that of Odisha. Every elite male athlete finds his way to the football pitch. Hockey is very much an afterthought, far behind even the Van Damme Memorial Athletics when it comes to following. The progress made by the likes of Belgium shines a light squarely on the mess that we have made of Indian hockey in the past four decades.
Had the team not been so sloppy in the 4-2 win against Wales – comprehensively thrashed by both England and Spain – even this crossover match could have been avoided. At this level of sport, even the small mistakes add up. You just need to look at Belgium and Germany and how they demolished their Asian opponents in a bid to finish top of the group to see the ruthlessness that separates potential winners from the rest.
India didn’t do a whole lot wrong at this World Cup. After all, they didn’t lose a match in regulation. But sometimes, not taking your chances – and in hockey, they don’t come any more clear-cut than penalty corners – is akin to losing. There was so much hype before this tournament began, with the home support expected to propel the team even further than they had gone in Tokyo.
Instead, as with Hardik Singh limping off hamstrung against England, India won’t see this race to the end. Yet again, they will watch other teams tussle for medals in a sport desperately clinging to memories of now-distant glory. We can get behind the players and say: “We go again.” But when you’ve been saying the same thing for nearly half a century, the words lack belief. The same belief that India didn’t have on the pitch at the Kalinga Stadium.
