LONDON, Aug 11:
India hit rock bottom in Olympic hockey after slumping to its sixth straight loss, grappler Yogeshwar Dutt kept himself alive for a bronze despite losing in pre-quarterfinals and walker Basanta Bahadur Rana set a national mark but ended up 36th in 50km race walk today.
The floundering men’s hockey team was beaten 3-2 by South Africa in the 11-12th places classification tie to finish last, which has raised a huge question mark over the future of many players as well as coach Michael Nobbs.
Stunned by the national team’s total annihilation and abject surrender, Hockey India swung into action and ordered an internal inquiry. But, HI secretary general Narinder Batra, while taking full responsibility, refused to pinpoint any particular individual for the humiliation.
The internal reports of coach Michael Nobbs, the team manager and physiotherapist would be submitted to Hockey India within 10 days and HI’s response would be known within a month, according to Batra.
Indian wrestlers continued to perform poorly as Yogeshwar lost his pre-quarterfinal bout in the men’s 60kg freestyle category after outclassing Anatolie Ilarionovitch Guidea of Bulgaria 3-1 in his preliminary bout.
Yogeshwar, a gold medal winner in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, gave a tough fight to four-time reigning world champion Besik Kudukhov of Russia but eventually lost the bout 0-3.
With Kudukhov making it to the final, Yogeshwar was given a lifeline, but has the difficult task of beating three opponents successively to win the bronze.
Elsewhere, on the roads of London, India’s sole representative Basanta Bahadur Rana in men’s 50km race walk set a national mark but still ended up a distant 36th by clocking 3 minutes, 56 minutes and 48 seconds.
The 28-year-old Indian walker was no match for his strong opponents but did well to improve upon his personal best and season best timing of 4:02:13 under bright and sunny conditions.
But topping the tale of woes for India was again the hockey team.
“Being head of the family, I take moral responsibility for the debacle. I would like to apologise to the nation on behalf of the entire team,” Batra told reporters.
“The coaches, manager, physiotherapist all will submit their individual reports to HI within 10 days. We will then analyse the reports internally with our Coaching and Development Committee and come up with our own findings within 30 days,” he informed.
“We will also call some former players and take their suggestions before taking any decision. We will take all corrective steps necessary to get things in order.”
The country, which had made waves in field hockey at these Games in the distant past by winning eight gold medals, including six on the trot between 1928 and 1956, plunged to its worst-ever show in the biggest sporting spectacle, barring the failure to even qualify for the Olympics four years ago.
India suffered an unprecedented whitewash by losing all the matches it played here, including five pool matches earlier.
The sorry saga of six successive defeats, thus, drew curtains to India’s painful journey in the Games.
India’s wayward shooting and the strikers’ inability to convert repeated raids into goals or penalty corners continued to be the story of these Olympic Games.
Andrew Cronje (8th minute), Timothy Drummond (34th) and Lloyd Norris-Jones (66th) scored for South Africa, while India’s goals came from Sandeep Singh (14th) and Dharamvir Singh (67th).
A dejected captain Chetri later conceded that India were out of depth at this level of competition and missed some experienced hands.
“We thought we could do well here, but the team was not good enough for a top-class event like the Olympic Games,” said Chetri after India lost the 11-12th place classification match on the blue turf at the Riverbank Arena.
“We need to be better prepared for such events, where experience seems to matter a lot more than we thought,” said the Indian custodian who did not play today.
“Though we thought ourselves to be a good team, we failed to justify the expectations,” he said.
“What we saw and learnt here was quite different from the past tournaments in which we had participated,” Chetri added.
Vice-captain Sardar Singh, who emerged as India’s best player in the disastrous campaign, said numerous missed chances in every game had hurt the team badly. (PTI)
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