BHUBANESWAR: An Indian training session is in progress. They are in the midst of playing defense versus attack in a condensed field and one of the defenders has just lost his man. Coach Harendra Singh stops play. “What the f*** are you doing?” he shouts. “Why are you not with your man?” With a little over 48 hours left, their approach is similar to lots of Indian kids. Study the basics in the eleventh hour and try to pass with distinction.
The scene is different when The Netherlands take to the turf for their routine on Wednesday. The only time Max Caldas ventures out of the dugout is to take part in an impromptu foot tennis with one of his charges. The 18 do their drills — turn and shoot from close range, penalty corners and give and go — with the support staff playing only a supervisory role. With a little over 24 hours left, the Dutch are so sure of the questions they put an end to their workout 30 minutes in advance. At 7.00 pm on Thursday, it will come down to this one question which will decide the winners of the last quarterfinal. Will India’s chaos prevail over Netherlands’ machine-like preparedness?
There was a phase in Indian hockey (in 2013), when they began to preach the Dutch DNA as the best way to take the sport forward. It made sense because there were a lot of similarities between the two; both believed in fast, attacking hockey. In came Roelant Oltmans as high-performance director of Hockey India. That Dutch influence stopped recently after Sjoerd Marijne was sacked following the debacle at the Commonwealth Games. One can make an argument for saying the Oranje influence over the previous five years is a reason why the match-up could be closer than a lot of people think.
Results between the two nations over the last six years back this sentiment. In the first five fixtures (from the 2012 Olympics till the World League Finals at Raipur), India lost three and won only one. In the next batch of five (from the 2016 Olympics to the Champions Trophy encounter at Breda in June), India have had the upper hand, including winning an away series in 2017.
This is why Thursday’s match has the potential to be a barn burner. At least on paper, it looks like India will be up against a better version of themselves. While India like to play attacking hockey the World No 4 will look to combine pace with lots of interchanging among the front seven.
Jeroen Hertzberger, who scored a hat-trick in the opening match against Malaysia, elaborated a bit on the above point. “They have runners while we are little more of a passing team. But, yes, they have the same things...” He was even more intimate when it came to the intricate art of playing in a fluid formation. “In 2014, I was in midfield while (Seve) van Ass, (Valentin) Verga and (Billy) Bakker all played forward. In 2018, I am a forward while those three are midfielders.”
There is also a real danger of both teams cancelling out each other because of their identical styles and reliance on pace to create chances but both Singh and Caldas rejected the notion that they would change their ideals to stop the opponents.
“We can only control what we want to do,” Caldas said. “And we are not going to change anything in style.” Singh, who has the chance to lead the World No 5 to their first semifinal in 43 years, spoke on similar lines. “They love to play attacking hockey, so do India. It is going to be an equal contest.”
The hosts’ main problem in the opening three games was their failure to maintain intensity for the entire match. Singh says he had addressed this. “I agree that we have dropped our intensity during the course of our games,” he said. “We cannot afford to do that against a team like Holland. I have told them to keep that intensity not just for 60 minutes but for 74 (including half-time and quarter breaks).”
With 136 circle entries in 240 minutes (one entry every 1.76 minutes), the men in orange are the best forward-passing side. This is why it’s vital for the Indian backline to be extra switched on. To achieve that, they need to be better than what they were in training.