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Being the top-ranked men’s hockey team, India had dominating wins in the group stages of the Asian Games. They started out with massive victory margins, like a record 26-0 against Hong Kong, China, 20-0 against Sri Lanka and 17-0 against Indonesia.
But that was only until their first knockout match of the tournament, and India floundered to a heartbreaking loss against Malaysia in the semi-finals.
Leading 2-1 until the dying minutes of the match, India conceded a goal with less than 60 seconds to go, sending the match into penalty shootout.
With scores level after 5 shots each, the shootout moved into sudden death, where each goal became a matter of win/loss.
India, who had scored 76 goals in the group stage, were left stunned after SV Sunil missed his attempt in the sudden death. Only Akashdeep and Harmanpreet scored in the first five shots of the shoot-off while Manpreet Singh, Dilpreet Singh and Sunil faltered.
Goalkeeper PR Sreejesh kept India in the game as he only let in two goals from Muhammad Ashari and Fitri Saari. Tengku Ahmad, Faizal Saari and Muhammad Azuan missed the target for Malaysia.
Defending champions India had obviously entered the Games aiming for gold, but landed a bronze. The team may not be extremely happy with their Asian Games performance, but still have a lot of positives to move forward with.
Next up, India will be hosting the Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar, starting 28 November. But there, they’ll be playing the best teams in the world.
India didn’t just miss defending their title at this Asian Games, they also lost a chance at grabbing a 2020 Olympic berth. Going ahead, captain Sreejesh says that while the team will be looking to seal a spot in the Tokyo Games, the immediate focus would be on the upcoming tournaments.
With the Indian men’s team losing out on medals at the Commonwealth Games, and being unable to defend their title at the Asian Games, is an Olympic medal a feasible dream? SV Sunil thinks so.
“We can definitely win an Olympic medal. Everyone believes we can. We ourselves are the challenge. If we play well, we will win,” he said.
Sreejesh on the other hand said, “Somewhere, something is going wrong, which is why the results are not in our favour. For the upcoming tournaments, I hope we can prepare really well, better than this, harder than this, and take the challenges in a better way”.
With close losses like the one at the Asian Games, what do senior players like SV Sunil tell the team to keep them motivated?
“We tell them there's nothing to lose. If we kept thinking about the loss, we couldn't play the 3rd or 4th place match well either. So it's better that we at least take something home,” said Sunil.
“So next time, when you prepare for a tournament, it's important to tell the young members that they can't make small mistakes that will cost them the match,” he concluded.
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