After fine run over past 5 Years, India’s 0-8 dismantling by Argentina raises concerns

ROURKELA: The Indian men’s hockey team came into the ongoing Pro League looking to begin their preparations for the Asian Games and World Cup and to slowly begin forming the squad for the same. They brought in several youngsters and rested some seniors, albeit with considerable controversy.

However, things have fallen apart completely for Craig Fulton and his team with India losing both their matches so far.



The 1-3 loss to Belgium seemed like a blip as the season kicked off, but then came the 0-8 mauling at the hands of Argentina on Thursday night. It was India’s worst socreline in over a decade.

India will now take on Belgium and Argentina again over the weekend, before flying off to Hobart to play four more matches, twice against Australia and Spain later this month. So shambolic was Thursday’s performance that even Argentina’s Tomas Domene, who scored four goals during the game, found it hard to believe.

“No, no, not at all, I didn’t expect the result. India are always a difficult team. They have good players. I think they had the chance with the two strokes, but they missed. That helped us get the confidence,” he said on Friday.

Fulton had something similar to say. “If we made a mistake, we got punished and if they made a mistake, we didn’t punish them. And that’s what happened,” he offered by way of post-mortem.

Fulton did not defend the result but believes it’s all part of the process.

“We’re putting ourselves in difficult situations and we’ll find out more about ourselves, about the squad and the team. And as a squad rotation, we changed players from Game 1 to Game 2, that changes momentum and at the same time it can make it better or a little bit harder,” added the coach.

While the overall performance is worrying, one of the major concerns currently is Harmanpreet Singh’s form. He missed two back-to-back strokes during the Argentina game, hasn’t converted the PCs and his defending has been questionable. The captain even made a mis-pass during the Belgium game from which they scored their opener.

Speaking about it, the coach said, “He’s not himself at the moment, as we all can see. But at the same time, we’ll assess it and see where he’s at.”

The India skipper also got injured during Soorma’s last game in the Hockey India League from which he is slowly recovering and if sources are to be believed there is a chance that he might be rested during the Hobart leg of the Pro League.

That said, India did play some of the worst hockey in recent memory in the second quarter when they conceded five of the eight goals within a span of just 10 minutes. A defensive lapse, a miscommunication leading to a poor back pass, and a goalkeeping error accounted for the first three. The fourth followed a missed trap by Hardik Singh, while the fifth came from a penalty corner after India failed to clear their lines. Basically, everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

Domene believes it was because India were perhaps trying to attack more after conceding the first few goals when things fell apart. “I think it was difficult for them because when you are losing 0-2 or 0-3, you have to go for the goals and you create some space in your back, you try to attack and we used that,” added the Argentinian.

But even the first two goals were the result of poor defending, something that Fulton has always put emphasis on.

Thus, by the time the carnage had come to a halt, India were 0-7 down and there was little that they could do to make a comeback in the second half. In the end though, Argentina pumped in one more goal to make it 0-8 and complete the rout.


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