We have discussed it in some of the earlier pages in this thread. If you are consistently getting a top-20 type u21 ranking every two years (when the u21 world events are held; the continental events the year before that determine the seedings of the world events), then it would show up in the national rankings a few years later. For India, when we were earlier in the top-20s some three or four times in the mid 2000s, one or two players from each of those teams ended up in the national team by early 2010s and we had a world top top-25 caliber senior team 8 or 10 years ago. Well ahead of Pakistan at around #40 to #50 and we would beat them very regularly. Also the Kazakhs/Uzbeks, all middle east teams. We would then only lose to Iran, Japan, China, Korea, and maybe Australia. Thailand would be usually on par with us or just behind. We never made the senior world cup though. You need to be in the wold top-20 and Asian top-3 or 4 for that. But India generally has had teams of the world top-20 to 35 quality (around 5th to 6th in Asia most of the time) at the senior level.Saffron Lenin wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:19 am Does u21 ranking perform translate in Senior team performance? I have checked fiva Ranking, it is 59 now!!!!
Don't worry about the #59 world ranking now (around Asian #10). It is a temporary thing (lasting 2 to 4 years). After around 2015 we had serious politics in our federation which became two factions claiming to be the official one. It went to a court case, FIVB banned us for a couple of years, etc. Pathetic mess. So we basically did not play international events at any level for around 4 years and the rankings that depend on the latest years' record, went down drastically. The team also became old and low on quality match sharpness (especially the youngsters who were to become leaders by now). But it was great to see that we are still producing junior players of good quality, for the first time in a long time, with our u18 and u20 show this year. One of the best years we have ever had, when both the junior teams two years apart did well and reached world final-16s. Between the two teams, I assume there are 3 or 4 players who will be in our senior team in the next few years. Our senior ranking also should go up over the next 4 to 5 years. It was an expected setback, from the horrible political fight we had for years.
If we get another u18 team of world final-16 quality in 2 years to add to the current u20 and u18 teams (six years of world top-15 quality), watch out for us. We will still lose to Iran (we always will and that will NOT change!), but we could even be top-3 in Asia.
It was notable that China, Japan, Korea and Australia have all had a bad time in the juniors. If their talent pipeline has got broken a bit and we are doing fine, that will help us in the coming years. Look ahead to 4+ years down the line to foresee anything in the seniors.
