Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by arjun2761 »

Yes, overall pretty good performance from the Indians. Missed a great chance at home.

Realistically, we can divide the top 7 into 2 groups. Australia, Germany, Belgium, and Netherlands are in the 1-4 group while India, Argentina, and England are in the 5-7 group (just a little behind and less consistent than the 1-4 group). Our near term goal has to be to break into the top 4 group and then perhaps hope for an Olympic medal in 2020.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by srini »

No playoff matches for places 5 - 8 ? i see schedule only up to 3rd,4th place playoffs
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by sameerph »

I think they do not have playoffs anymore except for 3-4 place.


One can say that we are firmly in 5-7 ranking braket now and will need some push to get to top 4. As SSP said, perhaps the right selection can do it for us.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by ssp »

One can say that we are firmly in 5-7 ranking braket now and will need some push to get to top 4. As SSP said, perhaps the right selection can do it for us
It's obvious to see the failings of our weak players, but somehow our selectors can't. Every single match results in the same rubbish from these guys.

Here are a couple of articles from the stick2hocey website:
http://stick2hockey.com/Article/Part-1- ... 15277.html

http://stick2hockey.com/Article/What-co ... 15276.html

Interesting comments about the usual umpiring cr*p that we have to put up with.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by srini »

Belgium maul England 6-0 in the semifinal, suits well for the English Attaboys who i feel got past their true 6 to 9 ish level due to a freak draw that matched them with inconsistent teams that are ranked high.Over all i feel India should improve its team selections, playing in Pro league would have given quality match ups to Mens team but since anyway we are not participating, would be good to work on selective bilateral series with a few European nations which may actually work out better without exposing our player weakness to other teams due to over exposure.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by ssp »

Looks like Harendra will be sacked:
https://www.sportskeeda.com/hockey/indi ... uSVZmnE-bQ

Usual reaction. As I predicted the garbage selections will continue but the coach is the one who is ousted.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by sameerph »

Yes, that would be silly to drop Harendra due to that outburst against umpires which was right. Probably it will be a pretext to remove him which will be sad. I think he needs more time and has not done badly.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by jayakris »

I think it really is too soon to remove Harendra. He clearly has not caused us to regress like I thought he would, even if one can argue that we have not taken the proverbial next step with him. But the next step, of moving from top-6 quality to top-4 quality, is a much bigger step than moving up from top-10 or top-12 to top-6 which we did in the last few years. The coach needs time to do that, and selectors need to help. The latter item was more urgent than making a conclusion on the coach. Drop some useless players first!
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by ssp »

Harendra has done ok so far. He over achieved at the CT, but our Asian games loss to Malaysia was horrible. However, it's madness to sack him now. Give him a full 4 year cycle. We have tried this policy of changing the coach almost every year and it's been a case of setting the team back each time.

On another note, the bias against us continues:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spo ... 115383.cms

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spo ... 107212.cms

The latter action is good news :D Can the ban be expanded to ....forever and could the FIH introduce a rule to ban all of India's weak/hopeless players? ;)
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by PKBasu »

Batra sadly is already hinting at sacking Harendra. Who the hell do these officials think they are?!

Belgium winning the World Cup is something of a morale booster for us in a roundabout way. We dominated them through most of our pool match. Ironically, had we lost that match, we might have had a much smoother road to the final and perhaps even the title.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by sameerph »

What a run Belgium is having in the last 4-5 years. From being a team out of top 10 just about 6-8 years back, they are now firmly in top 2 in the world now. Silver in the Olympics and now gold at the world cup. Wow, that is fantastic for a small nation with not much of a hockey tradition.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by ssp »

Belgium had a plan to progress upwards in the world rankings. Their domestic league is excellent and is producing quality players. I have been complaining about the lack of domestic hockey infrastructure as one of the main reasons for sub continental teams being poor. Nothing is happening on that front and seems unlikely with the current HI administrators. The HIL is not a long term project. Too much money being wasted on a 6 week tournament. The only beneficiaries are the overseas players, coaches and about 50 established Indian players.

Well done to Belgium, but the final was not very exciting. In fact modern hockey is all about power, speed, discipline and making the fewest errors. All aspects that India struggles with.

Anyway, the sacking of Harendra is imminent:
http://fieldhockey.com/index.php/commen ... eign-coach

I think 6th place at the WC may have been acceptable if we'd won the gold at the Asian games. That loss was appalling. It showed our tademark inconsistency when it really mattered. I hope they don't go back to Marijne or some other unheralded foreign coach.

Bring in Ric Charlesworh for a 4 year tint....please ;)
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by jayakris »

ssp wrote: Mon Dec 17, 2018 12:03 pmBring in Ric Charlesworh for a 4 year tint....please ;)
Oh boy. Why not? Actually, a topnotch coach may be able to do wonders now. When we had him with us a while ago, our standard was so poor that even he couldn't have done much. Things are different now. But high hopes, I guess, for this to happen....
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by ssp »

I don't know what the HI are thinking of. Sacking Harendra and getting an unknown foreign guy who is happy to tow the line and collect the $$$s is probably our fate.

I know we didn't make the semis, but the team played pretty well compared to some of the poor displays dished out throughout 2018. The Dutch were just that little bit more professional and composed. The Kiwi umpire was a disgrace...screwed us several times. He failed to card rough play by the Dutch, yet we lost Amit Rohidas for 10 mins. It may have made difference if we had 11 on the pitch in the last phase of the game, but maybe it wasn't to be. As always any 50/50 decision was blown in Holland's favour. In fact several clean tackles by our team were pulled up by both umpires. We did make far too many errors in trapping and passing, and our PCs just didn't carry much threat.

Harmanpreet, Surender and Manpreet were outstanding (& have been for a while). Hardik and Dilpreet are inexperienced but have potential. I like the way Simranjeet & Varun have progressed.I have seen some good stuff from Sumit and Nilakanta & so need to be a given a longer run. Sreejesh has been below his best since his injury. Our fitness is excellent and our entire team is falling back to block easy routes into our circle. This alone was making us look silly for ages.

Of the players I was moaning about when the team was announced, Akashdeep, Amit Rohidas (utterly stupid play for the PC defence and whack on Pruiser- but I have seen him do crazy stuff like this before) and Mandeep were as expected. Chinglensana is ok sometimes, but is too easily brushed off the ball. These need to be dropped for good. No point wasting time as there's no prospect of improvement. Kothajit played better than his ACT displays, but he just doesn't provide enough going forward and seems happy to knock the ball sideways and backwards most of the time.

The Dutch looked brilliant against Malaysia, Pakistan and Canada, but we matched them for 3/4 of the game. I haven't seen that for many decades. I honestly believe that if we select our best talent, work on our PCs, get fair umpiring (dreaming about this aspect) and show more composure we can win some of these crucial games.
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Re: Men's and Women's Hockey World Cups

Post by sameerph »

True, SSP. Belgium is now #1 team in the world. We drew with them and lost against #3 Netherlands just by 1 goal. That is quite an admirable effort. Our current #5 ranking looks quite legit now and we are closer to top 4 than before. Hope HI does not mess up the progress making constant changes in coaches.

Harendra deserves to stay unless of course if we are getting someone like Charlesworth.
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