Deepak Thakur will not want to remember the meet

I will see India’s performance at the recently concluded Sultan Azlan Shah Cup as a mixed one. There was no consistency, but in the backdrop of the strength of the squad that went to Kuala Lumpur, I see some reasonably good performance, in patches, especially in the second half versus Pakistan and versus Australia.

In fact, India did well in these tough matches, while it was deplorable, the way they lost to Malaysia in the pool match. True, they came back strongly later to beat the same Malaysian team (in the positional match), but the early defeat does remain a shock and does rankle.

The surprise side of this tournament were the South Koreans. The Koreans had once really emerged as the powerhouse of the continent, but in the last two-three major events they had failed to impress, initiating the belief that they were failing to keep up to their standard and as if their talent pool was drying up.

This Azlan Shah meet showed them in a new light, yet again. They were again the fittest team and fought till the very end. Their scoring percentage was pretty decent. Of course in the end Australia did prevail, despite being 1-2 down. I personally felt that while the Australian maturity was what made the difference, it was the South Korean immaturity that let the goals in.

Overall for India, there aren’t many who would like to remember this tournament except probably for Devesh Chauhan (again in patches) as he made some brilliant saves while letting in some soft ones as well. Of course, new right winger Raj Pal as well as Arjun Halappa were okay. I feel most of the seniors, like Prabhjot Singh, Deepak Thakur, Ignace Tirkey and captain Dilip Tirkey would never want to enter this meet in their personal favourites’ list.

However, I see one positive side to this. Many of the youngsters got a chance to play at the international level. On hindsight, I would like to add that probably it would have been a good idea to send the Junior World Cup players along with this team so that they would have had a taste of competition against some of the best teams of the world. The two tournaments are separated by a decent gap, so the players would not have been overworked. But only time will tell as to how Pakistan and India fare in the Junior World Cup. Pakistan took almost all their junior players to the Azlan Shah.

We must admit that this Azlan Shah squad was short of a number of current Indian players, those who are going to the Junior World Cup. Important among them are Adrian D’Souza, William Xalco, Sandeep Singh, Vivek Gupta, Adam Sinclair and Tushar Khandekar.

Then there were others who could not make it, namely Gagan Ajit Singh, Viren Rasquinha and Vikram Pillay.

The decision to keep the Junior World Cup team undisturbed was taken at the Indian Hockey Federation level. For the last decade Indians have played well in the Junior World Cup. Eight years back in England India were runners-up and four years back in Australia we were the champions.

There are not many junior tourneys in the world, so this meet assumes great importance. And all these players soon enough come over to the senior national side.

So I am not too disappointed with the Azlan Shah, if I think of the players the country missed.

The junior World Cup starts on June 29, with 16 teams in fray. India are in pool D, along with Holland, Poland and Egypt. The format of the Junior World Cup makes it a stiffer tournament than the Olympic Games.

The first phase will see the teams divided in four pools.

Following pool round-robins, the three top teams from each pool (12 in all) move into to two further pools (E and F), the bottom four moving into yet another pool (G). The E and F pools will be the championship pools (following the usual system), while the G pool will be the wooden spooners (13th to 16th positions).

That should give each country ample opportunity to prove themselves. It will be physically very demanding meet, though.

I personally feel that India and Pakistan have a fair chance. One doesn’t know the real strengths of Holland, Germany, Australia etc., because most players are unknown in the world of hockey.

Since the introduction of astroturf, most of the European countries and Australia have invested quite heavily on their younger players and there is a continuous flow of new talent, particularly in Holland and Spain.

This Junior World Cup will show how Indian hockey will fare in the next couple of years because it is from this tournament that we can find at least four to five who can cement their place at the senior level, and the Asian Games, Champions Trophy and World Cup meets are near.