Champions Trophy: A mixed bag for India

Indervir Grewal/Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 16

It wasn't the end everyone had hoped for or expected. But the expectation level kept seesawing.

Before the start of the tournament, not many had their money on the Indian team. The Champions Trophy is where the big boys play. The start wasn't reassuring; they lost to Germany and Argentina. But then India beat The Netherlands and Belgium and everyone started seeing the gold medal. The Indian team was aiming for history, hoping to reach their first final. 

Then the performance graph dipped drastically. The disheartening defeat to Pakistan raised doubts whether India could even win a bronze. Australia, who had improved significantly over the tournament, made sure that India's dream of winning a second medal ever remained unfulfilled.

India didn't have a bad game against Australia. In fact they didn't play a bad tournament.

They lost four matches and won two. The difference between the wins and the losses was the chances they missed. They converted their chances in the 4-3 win over the Dutch. 

In their match against Belgium, they didn't create many chances but they made those count. The turning point of the match was the equaliser. SK Uthappa's deflection came out of nowhere. It had been the first real attempts for India other than the penalty corner conversion by Rupinderpal Singh. 

Everything else was more or less the same. They dominated possession and created more chances than their opponents — even in their losses to Germany, Argentina and Pakistan.

The other feature that was a constant was their poor defence, which let them down throughout. It is not a new problem for the Indian team. But after their improved performance at the Asian Games, more was expected from the backline. VR Raghunath and Rupinderpal had a horrible tournament. Gurjinder Singh didn't look ready to play at that level. 

Against Germany and Pakistan, they conceded a goal in the dying seconds. Against Argentina, twice they conceded a goal within seconds of scoring.  

All this points to lack of discipline. It could be because of fatigue. This has been a long and busy year. The Asian Games gold was the most favoured prize. Achieving that goal would have taken a lot out of the players — more mentally than physically. Keeping that intensity was never going to be easy.

It is hard to tell whether Terry Walsh's departure had anything to do with this mental slackness. Walsh had always been vocal about the need to work on making the Indian teams' consistency.