Stagnant India need to rebuild

Bottling her emotions, Janneke Schopman made a rather forthright statement after the Indian women's hockey team's loss to Japan on Friday that shattered her team's hopes of qualifying for the Paris Olympics. The head coach believed her team, ranked sixth in the world, had the quality to be there. "So that is on me, because I think we should have been there," she said.

- Rutvick Mehta

Perhaps more so given their performance at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where the women's hockey team cooked up one of the most feel-good, fourth-place tales for India at the Games. The excellent outing brought with it the promise of greater appetite from the team, which may have shown signs of development in terms of the style of play under Dutch coach Schopman but has evidently stagnated in results since.

Peformances in key tournaments have dipped (joint-9th in 2022 World Cup, bronze at 2022 Commonwealth Games, bronze at Asian Games last year), while the supply line of players in specialised roles appears to have dried up. In Ranchi, the 0-1 loss in the third-place playoff dashed hopes of featuring in a third straight Olympics.

Sjoerd Marijne, who was head coach at Tokyo before his then assistant coach Schopman took over, said he was most disappointed for the girls and the coach "because they worked hard just for this goal".

"I had just hoped that what we achieved in the Olympics, they can proceed with it," the Dutchman said over phone. "It's really a pity that the team didn't qualify. But now, the evaluation has to be precise. Use this time to be critical, but also constructive.

“From the team that I had, 5-6 girls aren't there, and they had a lot of experience. In the last few years, Janneke had to renew the team. The young girls, I don't think, have that experience to play these kind of matches. I don't want to put it on the youngsters, because they did well. But our team in Tokyo was a little bit more experienced. And that made the difference.”