Girls' ascendancy touches Asian peak

In the space of two weeks, Indian hockey has managed to scale the Asia Cup peak twice. The latest conquest, though, ought to taste sweeter.

Following the footsteps of their male counterparts on October 22, Indian women's hockey team were, on Sunday, crowned the Women's Asia Cup champions in Kakamigahara, Japan, after defeating China 5-4 in the penalty shootout in the final.

Just to put the twin achievements in perspective, the men's team is ranked the highest in Asia, and sixth overall. Their road to the title was much along expected lines, in which they had to beat all lower-ranked teams, with Malaysia at 12th being the next best Asian team in the competition.

On the other hand, the women are placed 12th in the FIH rankings, and lie fourth among the highest-ranked Asian teams. India defeated two of the three higher-ranked teams in China (8th) and Japan (11th) in an unbeaten, refreshing and authoritative run in the tournament. The side beat the Chinese girls twice – in the league stage and the final.

Such victories had become alien to the women's team, which hadn't been continental champions since 2004. And therein lies the magnanimity of this achievement.

"It has been a great performance," Hockey India (HI) high-performance director David John told DNA. "We haven't won the Asia cup since 2004, and we did this time by beating three higher-ranked teams in world. It just goes to show what the team has achieved."

There's an added incentive too. The victory ensured that India qualified for next year's FIH Women's World Cup after failing to make the cut in the previous edition. India had already secured a place a week ago when South Africa won the Africa Cup of Nations, but the team can now fly to London knowing they have done so on merit.

"Qualifying for the World Cup was one of our primary goals with the women's team," John said. "We certainly didn't want to rely on other people. We wanted to qualify on our own right by winning our own Asia Cup."

And, one of the biggest masterstrokes in attaining that objective was handing over the reins of the team to Harendra Singh. The 2016 Junior World Cup-winning coach was tipped to replace Roelant Oltmans in the men's team, but HI instead decided to give him the charge of the lesser-ranked team with a lower profile in September.

But Harendra, who is as passionate a coach as one can find in India, took it up as a challenge of turning this team around and instilling a winning mentality in it.

John, who was majorly responsible in the selection process of the coaches, laid out the reason behind Harendra's appointment for the women's team.

"We wanted the team to play an attacking style of hockey. They were particularly lucky to be coached by Sjoerd (former women's coach). But they have done well to embrace the new style of play, which suits India in both men and women. Both teams scored a lot of goals in the Asia Cup, 28 by men and 29 by women. So it's exciting that we're scoring lot of goals," the Australian said.

This triumph has certainly brought the excitement back in women's hockey. And, it doesn't look like vanishing soon, at least with this bunch of players under Harendra.

"This is a relatively young team. Our goalkeeper is of 28 years of age, while the rest of the team is mostly below 25. They've been together and played lots of hockey together. It's time now to improve our ranking on the world stage.

"They'll surely get a lot of confidence from this win, and they can take it into the Commonwealth Games in April 2018 against stronger teams in the world. And from thereon, build towards the World Cup," John said.