The Indian women’s hockey team did not win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics. But they managed to capture the imagination of the entire nation. After narrowly missing out on a medal at Tokyo 2020, the team had fueled hopes of a medal at Paris 2024.
But a narrow loss to Japan in the Olympic qualifiers earlier this week has brought a premature end to those hopes even before the start of the upcoming Olympics. And what’s most heartbreaking about India’s loss is that a closer look reveals that India’s wounds are self-inflicted.
The Indian team displayed an inability to break down a stubborn defence against Japan and that eventually cost them a place at the Olympics. India sorely missed its most creative player, Rani Rampal in this game and Hockey India must find an appropriate explanation for dropping the former skipper from the squad.
Despite her experience and scoring 18 goals in the national games, Rani was not given a chance but was made the coach of the sub-junior team. More importantly, she was not the only player to be hard done by Hockey India. Penalty corner specialists Deep Grace Ikka and Gurjeet Kaur were also dropped to make room for the younger players and India paid the price for this as they failed to convert any of their 9 penalty corners.
India’s absence from the Paris Olympics will certainly hurt Indian hockey but what is more worrying is that there seems to be no clarity on the way forward for the team after the setback. When asked about the plans for the future after the loss to Japan, Indian coach Yannick Schopman said, ‘I don’t know.’
Interestingly, former Indian skipper Dhanraj Pillai has revealed that Schopman was given complete freedom to pick the team in the last one and a half to two years. And even though some senior players like Rani wanted to come back, they were denied the opportunity as Schopman chose youth over experience.
Eventually, this approach proved costly as India’s young guns could not seal a place at Paris 2024. Going forward, fans can only hope that Hockey India learns from its mistakes and finds the right balance of youth and experience in the team so that India does not meet a similar fate in the future.
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