Hockey India

The match which had high expectation from the home side turned out to be a complete disaster for the men in blue. The country never expected that India would defeat Australia but they never even expected the team to underperform. India who had high morale’s after the victory against England in semifinals was expected to give a tough fight to the Champions but they seemed to be like a bunch of kids with a stick in the hand running behind the ball.

The team who came from a victory never seemed to be a competition for the Champions.  It seemed to be a one way battle as the visitors dominated the game completely. They were hardly given anytime to create a move or a pass. The team reaching the CWG finals for the first time was expected to play with more determination and strength.

The most interesting part is India has conceded a total of 22 goals against Australia in their last 4 encounter losing all the four of them. It is good to see that team has made an improvement by reaching the finals but the thing to worry is that they continued to concede against the best, they never learned from their past experience but rather displayed a poor performance from the previous matches.

The Australians were undoubtedly the favorites but still the match seemed to be in balance for the first 15 minutes but later there was no stopping the champions. They seemed to be a bit lucky when they registered their first goal in form of an own goal but what happened later was simply an on field autopsy of the Indian players.

The champions have scored a total of 4 goals in their first half but seemed to be thirstier for goals taking there tally to 8. In the end it seemed like they were continuously kicking a dead man lying on the floor. The Australian captain was quoted saying “we never thought that the match would be so easy and we would score so many goals.”

The result must be too hard to digest for the team but will have to overcome it as soon as possible and try to gather all the positives which they got from throughout the tournament. If we look from a broader prospective it has been an overall good development in team except the finals.

It would be very shabby if we expect the players to win the title, the team hardly had witnessed good facilities when compared to those of foreign players. It is not because of the lack of funds available but the major reason is allotting it to the team.  The sporting bodies of the game are all bound by the great wall of politicians and Bureaucrats. The head of the bodies are not selected on the ability of controlling the sporting activities but merely on their political backgrounds. This has led to the practice of all disgraceful things like corruption and nepotism in the godly game.

It had been a good performance by all the participants in the CWG and has turned out to be fruitful. The fact is that in a country where cricket is such dominating has finally spotted some fine talents in other sports in this CWG 2010. Hope this sporting event turns out to be a turning point in India’s sporting history as there is much needed to be done to continue the gold winning ratio in both Asian games and Olympics.

Tags: Australia, Commonwealth Games, Commonwealth Games, Hockey, India, Sports