Indian Men's Team's Year in Hockey: From the Lowest of Lows to Glory in Hangzhou

A look at the Indian hockey teams' performance in 2023 that saw the men's team book a berth in the Paris Olypics.

On 28 January, 2023, match No. 41, India beat South Africa 5-2 at the Birsa Munda Hockey Stadium in the Hockey World Cup. It was a packed stadium and captain Harmanpreet Singh led the lap of honour, the team waving vigorously, showing its gratitude to thousands of fans in Rourkela who occupied every seat, stood in the aisles, irrespective of whether it was India’s Pool match or a classification game. Here they had crowded in to watch India finish 9th, considered by many an abysmal failure after the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

The start to 2023 couldn’t have been more inauspicious for a team that had dreamt of a podium, not achieved since winning the 1975 World Cup.

At the post-match press conference, India’s last for the World Cup, Harmanpreet, said the loss to New Zealand in the shoot-out, even after leading in the match and in the shoot-out, was ‘unpardonable’. He killed any talk of a rift in the team, usual gossip that comes up after India fails to make the quarter-final and focused on a rebuild. Sitting with him was Graham Reid, the coach who took India to an Olympic bronze. The joint-ninth finish with Argentina was the lowest for any host nation in World Cup history. Heads would roll.

And by the end of January, Reid and his staff had put in their papers. “It is now time for me to step aside and hand over the reins to the next management,” a bland press release quoted Reid. At that moment, it looked, almost seemed like old times, of coach resignations, and most troubling of thoughts, reactionary appointments that would deepen the crisis.

Though, Hockey India now had a former Olympic captain, its most capped player, hugely respected, Dilip Tirkey as President. His quotes to the media were not of shock of India finishing 9th in a World Cup, just months after his appointment, but of asking for patience and that “changes would be brought.”

In the women’s World Cup which happened in 2022 in Spain and Netherlands, India played well but just couldn’t force the issue, especially in the cross-over match against hosts Spain where India despite a bag-full of chances couldn’t close out the match. With three minutes left in the match, Spain scored, the 1-0 win taking them to the quarterfinals. Hope of a last four position at the World Cup, after finishing 4th at Tokyo, had been extinguished.

For Hockey India and its President, both the men and women’s teams needed an overhaul.  The women’s team coach, Dutch Olympic Champion Janneke Schopman, was putting in the hard yards, but the results were just not flowing in.

While HI put their trust in Schopman, Dilip and his team after many deliberations decided to appoint Belgium’s assistant coach Craig Fulton to helm the men's team. The South African was a former player and incidentally had played the 2004 Athens Olympics for SA. India and SA had played a Pool match in which Fulton and Dilip Tirkey, both had scored. Now one was India’s coach while Tirkey was HI President. Fate had played out a different hand for them, bringing them together into the same team.

Fulton’s appointment also indicated Tirkey’s approach to rebuilding the national team. He had already watched the 2018 World Cup in Bhubaneswar where he saw Belgium win playing attacking, creative hockey but on a foundation of extremely solid defence. He wanted the same.

Fulton seemed a natural choice. The South African had taken Ireland to the Rio Olympics and was the 2015 FIH Coach of the Year.  Taking Belgium to the 2018 World Cup gold and to the Tokyo Olympics gold, under Belgium chief coach Shane McLeod, Fulton had tasted unprecedented success. Making him India coach would bring in stability and structure.

Belgium’s Hockey Director would later say in an interview: “India has taken the best man available.”

It’s always difficult coming in after a disastrous World Cup, that too at home. Hockey evokes mixed emotions, win, or lose. Die-hard fans love the highs and commensurate the losses. The rest only get surprised if India wins. So, the 9th spot coming after the bronze at Tokyo only increased the chatter around ‘we told you so.’

Fulton did what a good modern hockey coach does. Understood the team, inducted players, gave them chances, the idea being preparing for two tournaments – one the Asian Games as winning it would mean directly qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics and then figuring out the core team for Paris. Not an easy thing when you look at the national team where, apart from 7-8 players who stand out, the rest are almost at par. In came mindset and how to tackle pressure - the crucial difference between a good and a great player.

Reid, while leaving the Indian team, had said in his post-tournament analysis that the extra pressure of being the hosts had made matches “difficult to process.” He told HI that appointing a mental conditioning coach would make the team take better decisions in moments of stress.

By early July, Paddy Upton, the man under whom India had won the 2011 cricket World Cup, had joined Fulton’s outfit. Upton was also the mental conditioning coach when South Africa had been No. 1 in all three formats of the game. Fulton said, Upton joining was a “perfect fit.”

Even captain Harmanpreet Singh, World Cup ghosts now receding in the rearview mirror, welcomed Upton’s appointment, saying: “We do struggle sometimes but we need to know how to overcome that.”

Highly technical sports like hockey where a game spread over four quarters and finishing in 60 minutes is akin to playing high-speed chess, substitutions happening every minute, coaches thinking at the speed of light, Fulton understood the requirements and results slowly started trickling in from the Pro-League to the first tournament that Fulton played in India at the Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai in August. The women, meanwhile, trained for the Asian Games, the pressure slowly building on Schopman. Anything less than a gold in China and it would be deemed a failure.

Fulton’s coaching prowess was seen during the ACT final against Malaysia. Upton’s skills were also tested as Malaysia went up 3-1 at the end of the 2nd quarter. India didn’t panic. They equalised 3-3 and scored the match-winner with four minutes to go.

Harmanpreet’s boys had changed some of the usual narrative that India are susceptible to breaking down in the later stages of the match. The ACT win was tiny going by the significance of the tournament but a huge psychological upper, a mental headlock for the players.

At the Asian Games, they decimated the opposition. In the semi-final, against South Korea, India led 4-3 in the 3rd quarter. It was a stressful moment as the Koreans piled on the pressure. India held together and won 5-3. Yet again an important step in closing out the match.

Against Japan, India led 3-0 in the 3rd quarter before closing out the match and picking up the gold and a direct spot in Paris 5-1.

Harmanpreet said, after the final, “We are putting in the hard work and will work on tactics and strategy so that we align ourselves with what is required for Paris.”

The women, meanwhile, suffered a 0-4 defeat against China in the semi-final, losing an opportunity to close out a direct berth for Paris. In a hard-fought match against Japan for the bronze, India won 2-1. Schopman broke down after the victory, the pressure getting to her. More than the pressure of delivering, reports had started swirling that Schopman’s job was on the line as the HI secretary Bholanath said to the media after the defeat against China, “What is the coach doing?” An extremely unprofessional statement from an HI official while the tournament was going on.

Dignified under pressure, Schopman, turned around the results, got the team going right after the Asian Games, when at the Asian Champions Trophy, India won seven consecutive matches to clinch the trophy.

The end of 2023 inspires mixed feelings of a men’s team slowly revving up for an assault on the Paris 2024 podium. While the women’s team gears up for the tricky January Olympic qualifying in Ranchi.

The aberrations, however, have been in the junior ranks where the men's team finished 4th while the women's finished a lowly 9th, an area where HI needs to think hard on the coaching aspects.

In the book ‘The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland there is a quote, though not connected with sport in anyway, somewhat resonates with Indian hockey that for long has been trying to traverse a path back to the top, reaching No. 3 in the men’s and No. 6 in the women’s, says: “Until you get profoundly lost, and know it’s within you to get unlost, you’re not trained—until you know it’s not an emergency but a magnificent puzzle.”

The continuation of that ‘magnificent puzzle', the improvements, wins, losses will continue to cheer and plunge into despair Indian hockey fans. Yet, we go away from this year with the conviction that the horizon is full of promise.