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Yes, a good tight win against the Belgians.

With the caveat that the European teams may be experimenting (rather than playing simply for a result), these are high quality wins for India. Not only is Belgium the current European champion (in their August 2019 European Championship) but Spain finished runners up in the European championship with an impressive 4-3 win over the Netherlands in the semifinals to make the finals.

Our results in Belgium are encouraging, and may be we are playing at Tier 1 level rather than tier 2 as was thought earlier. This is probably not because of us making any great strides but the European teams sliding may be due to funding issues. Economy does play some role in development of sports, and no-deal Brexit and lurking recession in Europe may be affecting their hockey teams. Argentina clearly has been struggling w.r.t its currency inflation and economy woes.

This is the time to strengthen the Indian hockey by focusing more on Junior hockey. From what i read about Jude Felix in this forum, he may not be the right guy to be coaching them going into Olympic year. We should quickly replace him with a coach having decent resume and that should help feed some talented juniors into senior team during Olympic year.

We will know where exactly we stand when we start playing in FIH pro league with the likes of Netherlands in Jan ' 20, Belgium in Feb. We play UK and Germany in April.

Finished the tour with a 5-1 win over Belgium. Before we get too excited, Belgium fielded only 4 of their first choice outfield players.
Still, good to see 5 wins in a row. And 20-4 goal difference is impressive

This was the most encouraging tour of Europe by our hockey team in 15 years!
I can't believe that our team is regularly and handily beating the top two European teams (Belgium and Spain). Graham Reid seems to be getting something right. The key will be not to mess it all up in the next 9 months before the Olympics. The last time things looked this promising was in 2003, when we won the Asia Cup and were highly competitive in the Champions Trophy -- before IHF politics intruded to mess things up royally.
I suspect Holland (Netherlands) and Germany have not vanished. That Belgium has outclassed them in European competition in recent years cannot be the permanent demise of the two great European hockey nations. So I remain wary of celebrating until we actually finish on an Olympics or World Cup podium (i.e., top 3). Our team will need to perform at the crunch, which it has failed to do for the past 44 years.

PKBasu wrote: ↑Sat Oct 05, 2019 3:47 pm The key will be not to mess it all up in the next 9 months before the Olympics.

The key will be not to mess it all up in the last 9 minutes in a crucial match in the Olympics.

I will take a semifinal in an Olympic as an achievement.

Interview of our coach Graham Reid about our Belgium tour with little more insights.

Coach Graham Reid introduces 'joint training' to Indian hockey

Can I be the first to predict that India will finally get a hockey medal at Olympics again next year? May even be a gold but I'm not predicting that. Just a hunch from me. It is finally time!

I am second to that, Jay.
But waiting for a comment from our residential hockey expert/maestro SSP ...

Since Reid has taken over, we've had 4 really encouraging wins- one v NZ, two v Spain and one against a reasonably strong Belgian team.Two of the wins v Belgium were against their 2nd string teams. We seem to be scoring freely and have also kept a few clean sheets.

However, we got shown up badly in the 2 tests v Australia and also managed to lose to NZ. So, I'll hold judgement on our chances at the Olympics till we've played a few matches in Pro-League.

Obviously a medal in the Olympics would be fantastic, but there are 3 reasons why we may fail:
1. Our expertise in messing up in crunch situations (gifting away PCs and picking up cards) and conceding goals in the last 5-10 mins.
2. The continued selection of Amit Rohidas, Akashdeep & Mandeep. Absolutely maddening nonsense to keep these 3 (for the past 6-7 years) and drop the likes of Devinder Walmiki, Sumit, Affan Yousseff, Dilpreet, Arman Quershi, Shilanand Lakra etc.
3. Umpiring. We tend to get so many green and yellow cards, whilst the opposition can trip our players and maybe we'll get a free hit.

Good detail report about our preparation plan for Pro-League and Graham Reid's thoughts.

Back in the workshop, India men to start oiling hockey sticks for Olympics

Vivek Sagar Prasad has been voted Rising Star of 2019!! Fantactic achievement and well deserved

http://fih.ch/events/hockey-stars-award ... -to-shine/#

Can't remember any Indian winning an award like this in the past.

Yes, Vivek Sagar Prasad becomes the first Indian to win the FIH Rising Star of the Year ...

And now we have a 2nd award!!
Lalremsiami has won the rising star award too. Well done to both.

Manpreet Singh wins us the 3rd award!!

Whilst I'm really pleased, this all sounds a bit too good to be genuine. For decades, we've come nowhere near winning any awards, but now that Batra is FIH president, suddenly it's all happening.

Sardara was a good option around 2012-2014 and Harmanpreet should have won rising star in 2016.