BENGALURU: Well, there are no good ways to dress up this performance by the Indian men's team. By the time the team in saffron had been thrashed by the team wearing a shade of blue, one couldn't help but wonder if saffron also somehow prevented the players from executing simple passes.
Minutes before their crunch clash began, coach Craig Fulton spoke about the need to be watertight at the back.
Less than 15 minutes later, they were already two goals down against Argentina. A dream had died in the most predictable of ways. Lackadaisical defending. It has cost them all the tournament. Conceding sloppy goals — either from open play or from penalty corners — on the back of silly unforced errors.
By the time the hooter cut through the Wagener Stadium at Amstelveen, the World No. 8 were beaten two times. Once, on the field. And, one, off the field. They lost both the mental as well as the physical battle. The South Americans bullied them off the park. You don't even need the proof of the final scoreline — 5-3 — to arrive at that conclusion.
The eye test itself was enough. India began the game knowing only a big win would keep them in the hunt. By the time the hour was over, many of the players couldn't wait to get off the park and go back to the cold comfort of their hotel rooms to chew on another chance wasted in their own private space. When the team had assembled in the Netherlands at the beginning of the month — after a three-day sojourn to the Swiss Alps when they left India — there was genuine belief that this generation could deliver a World Cup for the first time in 51 years.
They had already shown at the Paris Games what they were capable of under this regime. It's why that belief wasn't misplaced. But this team picked the worst possible time to revisit ghosts of horrors past, especially in the way they defended as a unit.
Passes were routinely mishit, players made multiple costly mistakes in almost every game and there were also question marks over the fitness status of Jugraj Singh and, later in the tournament, Harmanpreet Singh. It's a good thing that the International Hockey Federation (FIH) doesn't compile statistics like 'errors leading to goals'. If they did, India and their players would figure quite highly in that list.
Against the South Americans on Monday, for example, multiple errors led to goals. And it started when there was no Indian body on the far post and Lucas Toscani best HS Mohith to sound the board. It was too simple, like a goal in backyard hockey. Not a goal you would expect an elite team to concede in a virtual quarterfinals at the World Cup.
The worst was yet to come. Five minutes later, after a bad bit of defending from Yashdeep Siwach, Argentina scored from a penalty corner. It was a shambles as the backline was all over the place.
For a side whose coach loves to talk about the art of defending as a unit, for a side which had produced that masterclass against Great Britain in Paris, this was all rather tame. They got a goal back but it was tokenism. 1-2 very quickly became 1-5 as the opposition ran roughshod over the Indian defence. In the fourth quarter, the Indian players were present only in person but the spirit had long since evaporated.
For Fulton, a coach who prides himself on setting his teams with a sound defensive structure, the last 10 days will give him a lot of sleepless nights between now and the Asian Games where gold carries with it the added significance of an Olympic berth.
Before the tournament, Fulton, in an interview to this daily had said: "... we are working on the philosophy of press, counter, perform. That perform is obviously getting good outcomes from the back-end of our counters. It’s based on good defence, good structure, but it’s also about having a good mindset. We showed in the last couple of games (in the Pro League) that we can be really good and score goals."
What will hurt him most is the way his team played at the World Cup. There was a total lack of identity. And, ironically, the one game they looked very good — against Pakistan when they scored 5 — was also a game riddled with defensive mistakes. Over the last three years, he has tried to make this team more dependent on control and less reliant on chaos. At the World Cup, they were never really in control and, barring that game against Pakistan, they couldn't even use the chaos to their advantage.
They faced three teams ranked inside the world's top-10 during this tournament. The combined scores against Netherlands, England and Argentina? Goals for 6. Goals against 12. Just not good enough.
While they will play a few more games at the World Cup, attention will have to shift to that Asiad next month rather quickly. Sure, India are still overwhelming favourites and Fulton and this team have a very positive record against Asian teams over the last few years. But this is also the first time that Fulton will be under some pressure to deliver gold. Gold or go home.
