FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers: What failure to qualify for Paris 2024 means for India women's team

Indian hockey appeared headed for a revival of sorts after the highs of 2021. Though it officially remains the ‘National Sport’ of the cricket-mad nation, field hockey had been going through a steep decline from the 1980s and had hit rock bottom in 2008, when the men’s team failed to qualify for the Summer Olympics for the first time in 80 years. The pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics that took place in 2021, however, witnessed an Indian hockey team win an Olympic medal for the first time since Moscow 1980, with the Harmanpreet Singh-led men’s side winning bronze. And it wasn’t just the men’s team alone that was earning praise from the Indian sporting fraternity; the women’s team too had been hailed for their fourth-place finish, missing out on a historic medal by a whisker following a 4-3 defeat against Great Britain in the bronze-medal playoff. This was, after all, a team that had not qualified for the Olympics for three-and-a-half decades since they finished fourth out of six teams in 1980 — the edition that witnessed the debut of women’s hockey. And they would finally return to the Olympic fold in Rio 2016, where they managed a 12th-place finish. Sjoerd Marijne’s stint as head coach had brought with it the success that the women’s team had rarely experienced before. For many a hockey lover in the nation, it might have signalled the dawn of a new era in Indian hockey, especially in the women’s game. However, the team’s heartbreaking defeat against Japan on Friday and their subsequent failure to qualify for this year’s Paris Olympics appears to have taken women’s hockey in India back to its days in the wilderness, something they had been experiencing as recently as the previous decade. For a team that pulled off an almighty shock in Tokyo 2020 by defeating Australia 1-0 and scoring the opening goal in the semi-final defeat against Argentina, struggling to qualify for the Olympics appeared to be a thing of the past. It was perhaps something to be relegated to a corner of one’s mind dedicated to unpleasant memories. And what made the task of qualifying for the Paris Games easier, at least on paper, was the fact that the Indian team would be playing the matches on home soil, cheered on by home crowds. The FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers that finally ended up taking place at the Marang Gomke Jaipal Singh Stadium in Ranchi, Jharkhand were originally supposed to be hosted by China. Read | ‘Huge disappointment’, Netizens react as India’s failure to secure Paris berth However, following China’s qualification for the Olympics after their gold medal victory in the Asian Games, Hockey India had successfully convinced the International Hockey Federation (FIH) to shift the China leg to India, with Spain’s Valencia hosting the other women’s qualifying leg. What’s more, India had been placed alongside USA, New Zealand and Italy — all of whom are ranked lower than the Indians on the FIH Women’s Rankings. On paper, at least, India were expected to top the group and in the process, avoid a tough opponent such as Germany in their semi-final clash. Coach Janneke Schopman, who had served as an assistant to Marijne in the Tokyo Games, would have been quietly confident in her team’s ability to confirm a trip to the French capital for themselves. Sport, however, doesn’t always follow such scripts where the team stronger on paper is crowned winner. The United States of America, despite being ranked nine places below the hosts on the FIH ladder, gave the Indian team a reminder of that very fact last Saturday through Abigail Tamer’s second quarter-strike followed by the US’ resolute defence combined with the Indian team’s on-field sloppiness. Schopman’s side was given a rude wake-up call in the form of a defeat, but still had a long way to go in the tournament and could always claw their way back to an Olympic berth. A week later, they would suffer a similar fate against Japan, who would also defeat them by a 1-0 margin though under slightly different circumstances. The Japanese would launch a lightning-quick attack on the Indians, winning a Penalty Corner in the very first minute and opening their account through Kana Urata six minutes into the game through a second PC. The Indians were sloppy in large swathes in their opening encounter against the US but were putting up a much better fight against the Japanese, whose watertight defence refused to cede an inch. Coach Schopman, whose future as head coach suddenly finds itself in a state of uncertainty given it was set to end after the Paris Olympics, struggled to find answers for India’s defeats in the qualifying campaign against teams they were expected to breeze past heading into the tournament. “I think we were mentally ready after yesterday’s loss against Germany. We didn’t start well defensively and that sometimes can happen. Again, as a team we fought back, we dominated the entire game after the opening goal. “We needed to score goals but we didn’t. If I would know the answer why we didn’t, then I won’t be standing here, I would have given them the answer during the game,” Schopman, who had represented the Netherlands in two Olympics and three World Cups, said after the Japan defeat . Goalkeeper and captain Savita was among the several Indians who were left teary-eyed on the field after the defeat, and describing the defeat against Japan as heartbreak is justified in every sense of the word. India, after all, had bounced back after the loss against the US with solid displays against New Zealand and Italy, thrashing them 3-1 and 5-1 respectively. Even against Athens 2004 gold medallists and two-time world champions Germany, the Indians had managed to hold them to a 2-2 draw before getting pipped in the shootout 4-3. [caption id=“attachment_13634992” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Savita Punia, goalkeeper and captain of the India women’s hockey team, reacts after her team’s defeat against Japan in the third-fourth place playoff in the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifiers in Ranchi. Image credit: Screenshot/JioCinema[/caption] The manner in which the home team had fought back from an early setback certainly had justified the ‘favourites’ tag that had been put on his team before the tournament had even begun. In the end, all it took was one lapse for those Paris dreams to get shattered. “I have nothing to say, I am short of words. We deserved to go to the Olympics but…Japan also deserved and they are going,” Punia said after the match. For now, there’s little that the Indians can do other than pick up the pieces and start afresh with the next big event — the 2026 FIH Women’s World Cup in mind. While they hope to return to the Olympic fold in Los Angeles 2028 and possibly aim for a maiden medal in that edition, it might be in their best interest to shift their attention to a tournament where they haven’t finished in the top-four since the inaugural edition in 1974.