India women’s hockey team on the brink of relegation from FIH Pro League after defeat to China

Unsurprisingly, that’s how China hurt them too on Saturday. The Paris Olympics silver medallists beat their Asian rivals 3-0 in the penultimate FIH Pro League match in Berlin on Saturday, with two of those goals coming from penalty corners.

India’s capitulation cost them dearly as this was a must-win match for the team, coached by Harendra Singh and captained by Salima Tete. The loss — their 10th in 15 games — leaves them teetering.

With only 10 points to show for the entire season, India are all but out of the next season of the Pro League. Fellow strugglers England beat Germany 1-0 to go four points clear with just a match to go. And though India can still go level on points with Germany – by beating China, assuming England win again. But for survival, a goal difference of 13 will have to be overturned. Theoretically possible but practically improbable.

Relegation would be a disastrous prospect for India ahead of the World Cup and Asian Games. The Pro League, after all, guarantees 16 matches against the world’s best opponents home and away. The second-tier competition, called Nations Cup, is just a week-long tournament offering one-third of the matches.

The glum Indian faces at the end of the match told the story. The high of the Tokyo Olympics, where the women finished fourth, seems like a lifetime ago. Not winning the Asian Games gold medal, missing the Paris Olympics, and now on the verge of relegation from the Pro League are signs of a team in terminal decline.

Coach Harendra will argue that this is a young Indian team. But it doesn’t hold water — India’s squad on Saturday averaged 81 international matches as opposed to China’s 62.

From the coach’s point of view, his wards have been playing ‘excellent hockey’ throughout the tournament. Somehow, he argued in his players’ defence, the ‘results are not coming’.

Going by Saturday’s game, there wasn’t a lot of evidence on display that India played ‘excellent hockey’. Indeed, penalty corner defence is a big reason why the team finds itself in this predicament. But it’s not the only cause.

India were impatient in build-up, individualistic in attack, lacked imagination, kept running into opponents, and weren’t sharp in the ‘D’. And one is talking only about the offensive aspects.

In the first two quarters, India tried to attack the Chinese goal by hitting the ball hard into their ‘D’. It didn’t matter that there were a bunch of defenders in front of them, waiting to block the ball. There was no attempt to quickly switch flanks and attack from areas where Chinese defenders weren’t overloading; no attempt to play give-and-go passes and work their way into dangerous areas.

And when India managed to threaten the Chinese goal, they weren’t lethal enough. Baljeet Kaur, in the early exchanges, snatched possession near the ‘D’ and tried to test goalkeeper Surong Wu. Her shot — a half-chance — did not even hit the target.

Later, Neha Goyal’s eyes lit up when she was left one-on-one against the goalkeeper. But by the time she controlled the ball and looked up, Wu had already stepped out of goal — much to Neha’s surprise — and was quick to smother the shot. And when India won penalty corners, Deepika’s drag-flicks were too soft and predictable.

Defensively, it wasn’t too different either. As Harendra admitted during the half-time interview, India conceded far too many soft penalty corners. China initially had problems stopping the ball on the top of the ‘D’. After a couple of failed attempts, they used the common hockey logic, moved their castle a couple of steps sideways and scored twice in the space of five minutes — the first, a sublime deflection from Yang Chen in the 21st minute and then, Ying Zhang slotted her drag-flick into the bottom right corner, where Jyoti Singh could have done better to stop the ball from going in.

India did come out strongly in the third quarter but lacked the finesse as they were plagued by the same problems in China’s ‘D’. A tap-in by Anhui Yu to beat Savita Punia in goal in the 45th minute broke India’s resolve.

Deepika had a chance to reduce India’s deficit in the final quarter when the team won a penalty stroke. But her attempt hit the post, summing up India’s evening — creating chances but not finishing them. And it leaves the relegation sword hanging over them.