Hockey World Cup: Indian women’s dream ends after goalless draw with Australia

It was beautiful while it lasted, but the dream is over.India’s women’s hockey team have been knocked out of the World Cup after failing to reach the semifinals.Needing a win against Australia in their final Pool E match on Sunday, India fought hard but the World No. 8 side held on for a goalless draw in Amstelveen, Netherlands.Earlier in the day, the Netherlands had done India a favour by beating China 4-1. That meant a victory over Australia would have taken Sjoerd Marijne’s side into the semifinals alongside the Dutch. But India could not find a way past the Australians, bringing their impressive World Cup campaign to an end.Speaking ahead of the match, Marijne had said, “We need to score. That’s the difference compared to the two previous matches. And I agree with you. It’s good how we’re defending, but yeah, now we need to execute. We need to execute PCs and also field goals.”However, that execution never came. India gave away the ball too easily, made individual errors, struggled to create chances and lacked the discipline inside the D needed to find the winning goal.Australia, on the other hand, dominated proceedings from the start, and kept troubling the Indian defence throughout. They found the back of the net within the first two minutes, but the goal was disallowed following a review. They scored again at the beginning of the fourth quarter, only for that goal to be ruled out as well.In the end, though, it did not matter as Australia held on for the draw to finish second in the pool, ahead of China and India. All three teams finished on two points, but Australia went through on goal difference and goals scored.Irrespective of the result against Australia, it has been a brilliant overall performance by the Indian women, who have lost just one of their five matches — against the Netherlands. Not many would have expected them to come this far, especially after the way they were performing last year.But things started to change this year after Marijne took over the team and led them to a runners-up finish at the World Cup qualifiers before guiding them to the Nations Cup title.He was certainly not satisfied with just that. Before the World Cup, he had said: “We are the best of the rest. We have proven that with the Nations Cup, and now it’s time to make the step into the top eight in the world.”He has already delivered on that promise. Now, it remains to be seen whether India can go even further in the days to come.