FINDING ORDER IN DISORDER

Loss to the Black Sticks reflection of mediocre World Cup with unforced errors, shaky decisions & mental pressure

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN

IT'S the morning after the night before. The only people at the Kalinga Stadium are the ones who are paid to be here. Sixteen hours removed from the drama of Sunday night, it feels like the world's worst hangover is beginning to hit. In hindsight, it is poetic that Indian men's hockey's best moments over the last four-five decades came when there was nobody to watch it. As soon as the fans returned, that fear of failure seemed to have gripped them thanks to the weight of 15,000 people watching their every step. It also explains why at training sessions inside Bengaluru's Sports Authority of India (SAI) campus, the players executed penalty corner variations with success. At the World Cup, all those weeks of planning melted.

In Tokyo, PR Sreejesh climbed on top of the goal. It was an apt metaphor to suggest a high had been reached in a sport where the country has seldom managed to marry reality with expectation. In Bhubaneswar, the Indian players hit the turf, disappointment writ large on their faces. It was an apt metaphor to suggest the Tokyo high was an aberration and not the new normal. To a few people, this may seem like revisionism. The game against New Zealand did come down to the barest of margins and this piece would have been about their fighting spirit and grit if the centimetres had gone in their favour. Yet, the game against the Black Sticks was, by and large, how their World Cup went. Unforced errors, multiple mistakes, shaky decision-making, and a certain sort of fear paralysis. No other thing tacitly explains why coach Graham Reid, a man who counts people management among his skills, admitted that this team may be better served with a permanent mental coach.