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The Indian team has some serious issues to resolve before heading for another international engagement.
Indian team need to work on their shortcomings. (AP Photo)
India’s World Cup campaign ended with another heartache as the shootout went Belgium’s way at the Blefius Hockey Arena in Wavre, the township half an hour away from Brussels that shared the hosting rights with Amstelveen in The Netherlands.
Unfinished business notwithstanding, it was not an easy task for the Indian team to get back to the hockey pitch after their hopes of making the semi-finals were decimated. Playing for minor positions in global events has become the norm over the past few decades, yet it does not come easy for any side.
Skipper Harmanpreet Singh once again led from the front to convert two penalty corners against Belgium in the play-off to determine the seventh and eighth positions.
The Indian team has been playing Belgium quite often recently, hence there was no big element of surprise left. The contest transpired into a very intense game, in which India had to take off their goalkeeper in the last stages to add thrust to the raids as India went all out for the equaliser. The equaliser came in the shape of Harmanpreet’s second goal with just 25 seconds remaining on the clock. India’s other goal came from livewire striker Abhishek.
Harmanpreet’s second goal helped India match Belgium’s three goals at the end of regulation period and forced the contest into a shootout. The shootout went 4-3 Belgium’s way after their star Roman Duvekot scored with the last attempt.
Make no mistake, finishing seventh was a big blow for Belgium, who won the World Cup in 2018 and the Olympic gold medal in 2021. The Belgians are extremely dejected not to have secured a place in the semi-finals.
The Indian team has some serious issues to resolve before heading for another international engagement. Nervous defenders in their own circle and shaky strikers upfront are just a few of the problems confronting the Indian side. Abandoning the midfield to fall back often put too much pressure on the defence, which thereafter lost its structure and kept conceding goals.
Coach Craig Fulton had promised a tailored World Cup campaign, which indicated a specific plan for each game as the tournament proceeded. Yet, instead of opponent-specific plans, the Indian display showed a lackadaisical approach at the start, and a tendency to play low for long periods of the match. Lethargic starts saw India concede soft goals in more than one match. This surely did not convey an extremely serious approach.
India’s disappointing show notwithstanding they have moved up one spot from the ninth position in the 2023 World Cup that was jointly staged by Bhubaneswar and Rourkela.
That was a disastrous result for an Indian team experiencing the hype after a bronze medal at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Failing to make the quarterfinals on home turf was a severe blow.
Now, two years after India clinched a second successive Olympic bronze, another disappointing show is bound to have an effect on skipper Harmanpreet and his team.
The dejection at the World Cup leaves the team facing a lot of questions, just two weeks before the Asian Games in Nagoya (Japan), where India start as the defending champions and realise they must win the gold again to secure direct entry to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
After a year of public debate raising questions about the chances of World Cup fatigue hampering the Asian Games performance, the Hockey India selection panel has picked the squad quite similar to the World Cup squad. This does not quite convey the sentiment that India has been affected a great deal by this World Cup reversal.
The Indian men were also feeling a bit of embarrassment as their women had secured the fifth position the previous day with a resounding show that earned them a 3-1 victory over former champions Germany. This was the best show by the Indian women since their fourth-place finish in the inaugural Women’s World Cup in 1974.
(The writer is reporting from his 10th Senior Men’s Hockey World Cup)
Quick Answers
Ask News18India’s disappointing performance in the Hockey World Cup, where they failed to reach the semi-finals, has raised questions for the team just two weeks before the Asian Games. Despite the setback, the Hockey India selection panel has largely retained the World Cup squad for the Asian Games, suggesting that the team’s sentiment has not been greatly affected by the World Cup reversal. India enters the Asian Games as defending champions and needs to win gold to secure direct entry to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Ask News18August 29, 2026, 08:35 IST
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