2006 World Cup, Monchengladbach, Germany (6-17th Sept)

[PKBasu]

My optimism was shortlived, and proved unwarranted. I watched the last 50 minutes of the India-Korea match, and it was depressing to see India lose again, 1-2. It's useless beating Korea in side tournaments like the Azlan Shah Cup, and then lose abjectly this way when it matters -- in the World Cup.

India are not a world-class hockey nation any longer -- primarily because Indian teams cannot last 70 minutes on the field. They can play at most for 50 minutes or so, but after that they are simply exhausted and the opposition is allowed to swarm the Indian goal, get penalty corner after penalty corner until they finally convert. In the melee, an Indian player invariably picks up a yellow card, and that ends all hopes of a comeback. The Paolo Rossi of Indian hockey, Shivendra Singh, scored yet another opportunistic goal in the 43rd minute, but India were totally outplayed in the last 10 minutes of the match, as Korea scored off two penalty corners in the 63rd and 69th minute -- the latter an absolutely brilliant strike. India were lucky not to have a penalty awarded to Korea in the 60th minute. You get the drift: towards the end of the match, India are ragged and ready for a whipping. It happens too often to be ignored.

[BSharma]

I try to remain an optimist as the major hockey tournaments start and then my optimism starts fading away pretty quickly.  Indian teams over the past several years have shown the same type of problems - lack of world class fitness, too much dribbling, timid play on defence, poor off the ball running, lack of finishing skills, inability to prevent other teams from scoring in the last minutes, etc.  After watching parts of the Indian matches involving Indian team at this World Cup (via Internet), I have also noticed that Indian players have little concept of man-to-man marking or zone defence.  Freeze frame the video of the Indian players when the opponents are near the Indian D and you will notice that Indian players leave so many gaps.  You will see a good example of it in the India Germany match and can see why the Indian defence is so porous.

Jay wrote:

What I was encouraged by, was that at least some things looked better than earlier, and the some of the rest seemed coachable/correctable too.  Will Baskaran manage to do it - that is the question.

I agree that the problems facing the Indian team are coachable/correctable, but none of the Indian coaches have been able to do so.  Teaching off the ball running, proper marking of the opponents, etc should not take more than a couple of months.  If players refuse to learn then replace them with those who want to learn.  Ya, ya, ya.  I know that Gill wont axe some of his players and the other state associations will make sure that their players stay on the team. 

[arjun2761]

primarily because Indian teams cannot last 70 minutes on the field. They can play at most for 50 minutes or so, but after that they are simply exhausted and the opposition is allowed to swarm the Indian goal, get penalty corner after penalty corner until they finally convert.

This has been obvious for many years now.  The argument has always been about how to fix.  One perspective is to uncover 11 Dhyan Chands who sheer skill makes up for all these deficiencies so that they can dominate with low levels of fitness.  The other approach (the more feasible in my opinion) is to significantly upgrade the fitness of our best players.  This is what Bhaskaran is trying but a month or two is not enough to make a sufficient difference. However, someone like Derrick Knox, should make a difference over a year or two provided top level committment is maintained.

[BSharma]

Arjun makes a valid point about having 11 Dhyan Chands versus 11 supremely fit players on the Indian team.  Finding one or two Dhyan Chands will be a challenging task especially with the rise of hockey standards in European, Australia/NZ and South American teams, and our own IHF not wanting to have a superstar player.  I am glad that IHF has employed Derrick Knox to improve the fitnes of the players, and time will tell if he is able to bring about a change in the conditioning of the players.  Unlike the cricket players who make a ton of money and can afford personal trainers and have access to proper gyms, hockey players will have nothing but city roads to do their jogging and old age dumb bells to maintain their muscles once they leave the confines of the coaching camps.  Unlike cricket, hockey players in India have no one breathing down their necks to take away a place on the team.

I guess I become more discouraged as the tournaments start to wind down.  The "blame the other guy", the "buck does not stop here", "we lost to Germany and Korea by one goal ONLY", etc will start again.

[PKBasu]

If we finish last in the pool, there could be no further excuses. It will be a miracle if we don't finish last. This is the worst Indian WC performance in over a decade.

[BSharma]

Team standings with one game left for the Indian team to play:

Pool B:
Team  P W D L GF GA PTS

Korea 4 3 1 0 8 5 10
Netherlands  4 2 1 1 10 8 7
Germany 3 2 1 0 7 5 7
England  4  1 0 3 7 9 3
South Africa 3 0 2 1 3 5 2
India 4 0 1 3 6 9 1

[jaydeep]

Totally agree with PKB .. It was shocking to see that Koreans were grabbing penalty corners on a will ... In second half we gave 7 penalty corneres ... Koreans missed many of them, reason was they were trying indirect combination ... But when Jang Jong-Hyun take direct hits, there was no stopping.

Korea were unlucky when Umpire Putra changed his penalty stroke decision, but then India also were unlucky when a splendid move between Rajpal and Shivendra in the 68th minute stopped by Korean defender by body in the 'D'.

Raghunath was slow while taking penalty corners ... Koreans played smart game inside our 'D' to gained so many penalty corners ... Truely speaking Koreans deserved to win this match and they did it.

Jaydeep.

[sameerph]

I thought untill last 15 minutes, India & Korea were evenly matched . If at all India were slightly superior . But in the last 15 mins. Korea raised their level of game considerably & unfortunately India fell apart at the same time.

Still overall not a bad match yesterday as compared to the one against England. In the 2nd half of that match England were all over India with India not even making a single decent move. I did not see the match against South Africa but I thought our best game was the opening one agianst Germany.

The lack of consistency in the level of play from match to match is one of the reasons for our bad performance. That in turn could be due to lack of adequete fitness levels.

Overall disappointing World cup for India.

 

[PKBasu]

Disappointing is too mild. Shocking, dismal, awful, disgraceful -- that's more like it!  Of course Korea and India were evenly matched until the last 15 minutes, but ultimately Korea won! That's what counts. The hockey game lasts 70 minutes, it's no point being competitive for 63 minutes (or 55 for that matter), but to give it all away in the end. No excuses will do any longer.
India had a penalty corner opportunity (with the score 1-1) on the 68th minute, but Raghunath did not even make a hit or drag-flick -- but instead lost possession of the ball!! What could be more humiliating? Raghunath was otherwise quite good in defense (although he took one too many scoops from outside our D, and once lost possession dangerously). Within a minute of that inept play by Raghunath, Korea had converted another penalty corner and it was all over with 44 seconds to play.

[sameerph]

You are right ,PKB. Maybe I was a bit too mild for Indian team & perhaps a bit too optimistic. 

Btw, IHF has ruled out major changes before Asian games.

http://www.rediff.com/sports/2006/sep/12hock1.htm

[PKBasu]

The worst of it is that a couple of months ago, we showed that we can beat Korea. But the difference between the two sides is that Korea can nonchalantly beat Holland/Germany/Australia on their day, and so have occasionally had a podium finish at the World Cup/Olympics. But in the last thirty years, we have never beaten those three teams in a World Cup or Olympic match. It is partly a severe psychological problem, and partly a fitness issue (not being able to sustain the level of play in the last 15 minutes). We also need a bench, plus a few mercurial geniuses in the great tradition of Dhyan Chand, KD Singh Babu, Leslie Claudius, Prithipal Singh, Ajitpal Singh, Surjit Singh, Ashok Kumar, Mohammed Shahid, Dhanraj Pillay. Actually one mercurial genius at a time will do. This team doesn't have one: Gagan was a shadow of himself here, Viren is good but not a genius (and the same is true for Vikram).   

[PKBasu]

Japan beat Argentina 4-3 today, making us look even worse. So we will probably play Argentina in the first relegation match; if we lose, we play for 11th-12th positions against either Japan or South Africa. Oh the bitter ignominy!

[arjun2761]

Rather than Korea, Pakistan is probably the team most similar to us and they have generally done better than India in the last 25 years.  In general, they have had better PC conversions than us although both Jugraj and Sandeep had potential before their tragic accidents.  However, it is surprising that our dribblers are unable to force more PCs....

[BSharma]

India lost to Holland 1-6. 

Dilip Tirkey scored the equalizer in the 14th minute after Holland took the lead with Taekema's goal in the 13th minute.  Holland made it three goals in 3 minutes when Taekema scored off a penalty corner to lead 2-1.  Holland scored again in the 20th minute but the referee disallowed the goal.  Taekema scored in the 25th minute via another PC to make it 3-1 and then added another goal via PC to give Holland a 4-1 lead.  With Taekema not on the field, Dutch player Weusthof adds Holland's 5th goal via PC, and then Taekema's rubbed the Indian team's noses into the ground with his 5th goal in the 65th minute.

Here are some comments from the FIH website about the match.

"HALF TIME: After an even first ten minutes, the game burst into life with three goals in less than four minutes. NED controlled much of the latter stages of the half, and it is unlikely they will get anything less than three points from this match."

"Unlike yesterday's clash between NED and England, Teun De NOOIJER is being man-marked in this game. Viren RASQUINHA has the responsibility of keeping the great man quiet, but De NOOIJER keeps finding space to work his magic."

[gbelday]

I just think that the players are pissed and revolting against Bhaskaran for cutting out their Dal fry and Aloo sabzi   How else can we explain this pathetic show?