CHENNAI: It looks like the Indian women’s team’s Asian Champions League campaign is over. A day after one of the athletes returned a positive Covid-19 test, the team’s name has been removed from the fixtures list. They were scheduled to play Japan in their last group stage match on Saturday but that fixture has since been struck down by the organisers.
Saturday is now finals day with ‘China vs Thailand’ a 3rd-4th place match. The competition will end with Japan and hosts South Korea facing each other in the final. Curiously, both Hockey India as well as the Asian Hockey Federation (AHF) refused to confirm if India had indeed withdrawn from the tournament.
On Wednesday, after there was one positive test within the Indian team, HI put out a tweet confirming that their match on Thursday wouldn’t go ahead. Since then, they haven’t put out any statement about whether the team would come back to India at the earliest or if the entire contingent would have to serve a quarantine period before coming back. In India’s opener, they had beaten Thailand 13-0. One wonders what implications this would have on the men’s tournament, scheduled to begin in Dhaka on December 14.