Needing an eight-goal victory to advance to the quarterfinals, India loses its cool and settles for a 4-2 victory over Wales. India was too fast and too furious, but also too fumbling and too flawed.
Their long, airborne balls sailed over the advertising boards and nearly landed in the stands. The rushed shots spewed everywhere. Their first impressions deserted them. And they were moving quicker than they could think. Everything was hasty and forced.
To be sure, India triumphed, as predicted. This was a match between hockey royalty and the sport’s upstarts; between a team ranked sixth in the world and a team that was ranked 38th not long ago before climbing to 14th; between one of the best-funded programmes in the world and a group of semi-pros who had to crowd-fund their way to Odisha because they did not expect to get this far.
Over aggressive :
But India, who are undoubtedly stronger than this, were guilty of looking beyond their last group-stage opponents, Wales, and being considerably more concerned with what was ahead. They aimed for a score of 8-0. They were defeated 4-2.
Before they ever took the field, India understood what they needed to accomplish to win the group and advance directly to the quarterfinals. Following England’s 4-0 thrashing of Spain soon before India’s match, the hosts needed to not only beat Wales, but also by at least an eight-goal margin to overtake England’s superior goal differential.
Before England set India that ambitious goal, the crowd’s anticipation of a goal-fest had risen following the Netherlands’ 14-goal thrashing of hapless Chile, establishing a World Cup record in the process. While the Dutch accomplished this without needing to go above second speed, India spent the whole 60-minute period in top gear but never really got moving.
Playing to the gallery, the home team started as if they wanted to score all those goals in the opening quarter itself. They went from 0-to -100 in less than 10 seconds, when they first raided the Welsh ‘D’. But inside a crowded circle, they never looked composed enough to score.