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It is not just that India was once the best team in the world in field hockey. It’s that India was once better at field hockey than any country was at nearly anything.
Those glory days had seemed to be long gone. India, which once won hockey medals at 10 straight Olympics, has not touched one since 1980. But at these Olympics, the Indian men’s hockey team has raised echoes of the great teams of the past, and the women’s team, which has never won a medal, is in contention for the first time.
The men’s gold medal bid came to an end on Tuesday with a 5-2 loss to Belgium in the semifinals, but the team still had a chance for a bronze, its best performance in a generation. The women remain alive for gold.
“Disappointed, but you don’t have time to worry about that,” said Sreejesh Parattu Raveendran, the goalkeeper known as the Wall. “Now we still have a chance to win a medal, and that’s more important for us than crying at this time.”
The golden era started in 1928 when India, which had only been playing international matches for two years, won at the Amsterdam Olympics, scoring 29 goals and giving up none. It won in 1932 and ’36 as well. Dhyan Chand, widely considered the greatest hockey player ever, was part of all three teams.
After World War II, the streak continued, with gold medals in 1948, ’52 and ’56, before India finally lost to Pakistan in 1960. It reclaimed the title in 1964.
But that was the end of the Indian dominance. The country won one more gold medal, in the ed boycott year of 1980, but has no medals since. India was 12th and last at the London Olympics and eighth four years ago in Rio. In a country where cricket is by far the dominant sport, hockey was becoming more and more of an antiquated curiosity.
But the 2020 India team has been a throwback to its glory days. After a 4-1 record in the group stage, India upended Britain in the quarterfinals, 3-1, to advance to the final four.
The women’s team, without any of the men’s glorious history, has similarly overachieved, shocking Australia in the quarterfinals. It plays in a semifinal of its own against Argentina on Wednesday.
“This will be a very big, big thing in India,” said the women’s team captain, Rani Rampal.
Indeed, the teams are causing a stir back home. The Times of India said the women’s victory over Australia rivaled India’s win over England in cricket at Lord’s in 1983 as the greatest sporting upset in Indian history.
The paper had called the men’s semifinal “an hour of reckoning,” saying that “a win will not just confirm a return to the Games podium, but it will restore belief in the sport.”
Though India lost the game, a bronze and that return to the podium is still in the offing. So too, maybe, is a new day for Indian hockey.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/02/sports/olympics-tokyo/