FIH Hockey Pro League: ‘A lot of sadness’ Paris 2024 heartbreak still fresh, Indian women’s team face massive challenge in Odisha

From Saturday, five of the top teams in women’s hockey – India, China, USA, Australia, and powerhouses Netherlands – will all be in action in Odisha over what promises to be a high-quality leg of the FIH Pro League 2023-’24. Over 20 matches, they will get to test each other at the biggest level at the start of an important year.

Unfortunately for India, they are the only team among the five who won’t be at the Paris Olympics.

The heartbreak of not qualifying for the marquee event from Ranchi still fresh, Savita Punia and Co return to action in a tournament that would have meant a whole lot otherwise. When India won the FIH Nations Cup in Spain to qualify for the Pro League, it was seen as a massive shot in the arm and a chance for quality preparation for the Olympics, but now they will have to find a way to pull themselves up and play largely for pride.

Of course, there is a World Cup quota spot available for the winner of this season’s Pro League but otherwise, it must be tough to pick up the pieces from the Ranchi debacle. For now, despite the failure of reaching Paris, Janneke Schopman stays on as the head coach for a team that is entering a period of uncertainty and there are no wholesale changes to the playing squad either.

“As a team we are hurting still, it has been a tough two weeks. We have done a lot of talking and thinking about what happened and why it happened,” Schopman said on Friday. “We want to show that we are a good hockey team and we can play against good teams as well. We won’t get the Olympics back but we can only move forward and that is our plan here, to play to our strengths, and to show that we can play well.”

Schopman’s contract runs till Paris and it is not clear yet what Hockey India’s vision for the women’s team is but the former Dutch star is hoping that her team can show their level in Odisha.

“I am currently busy writing a report for people who have to make plans for the upcoming years. My opinion is still that women’s hockey has a bright future in India, we can be a top-five team in the world. But things have to get better and change at many levels, it’s an ongoing conversation I have with Hockey India and SAI,” she said, without revealing what her own long-term plans are.

For starters, India will be bolstered by the return of fit-again Vandana Katariya who will take up the role of vice captain. Watching from afar as her team missed boatload of chances couldn’t have been easy for the veteran forward but she insists the team played well.

“From the outside, I thought the team played well. One team had to win and one had to lose, that is what happened. I wanted to play, but it is part of an athlete’s life. Of course, there is a lot of sadness that we lost in the end,” Vandana told The Indian Express. “Where our problems were in the Qualifiers in the D, we have started working on it again. It’s a learning for us. We have improved as a team, we have to overcome our mistakes. We have lost an opportunity for the very thing that we have trained so hard for.”

While Vandana missed out on going for a third straight Summer Games, at the other end of the career spectrum is Ishika Chaudhary, who like any young athlete, picked up the sport hoping to represent her country at the biggest stage. But she, as a majority of her teammates, must now try to reset. “It’s really hard for me personally. It’s the worst feeling. It’s a childhood dream. But I am focussed on the fact that I am young and I have time, so I must ensure I learn from this to improve,” Ishika told this daily.

For the short term, Schopman must find solutions for India’s goal-scoring issues. “The hockey we played there, we created a lot of opportunities to score goals but we didn’t (score). I believe we can play dominating hockey. In the last six months, at the Asian Games, I wasn’t happy with our team’s performance there, but I was happy with the performance at the Olympic qualifiers. We now need to look at individual players and I need players to take accountability to bring their own best self to every game.”

Gurjit Kaur’s return to the fold adds one more drag-flick option – in Ranchi there was only young forward Deepika – but problems persist.

“We need potentially more depth in our penalty corner. That is a concern in women’s hockey in India. If you look at any other country in the top 10, they have 5-6 drag flickers and we do not. So there’s work that needs to be happening in talent development,” the coach said.

India will take on reigning Asian Games Champions China in their first game, followed by a clash with the Netherlands on Sunday. They will face off against Australia on February 7 before playing their last game in Bhubaneswar against the United States on February 9. The caravan will then move to Rourkela for the second-leg fixtures.

Tough as it may be, perhaps the biggest driving force is for the team to at least show their quality. As Schopman puts it, “The agreement we made as a team is we want to show up as a team, fight hard and play to our strengths. We want to challenge whoever we play, every team here except us is going to the Olympics. Let’s see, are they better than us or can we compete with them? I think we can.”

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