Down and out

Missed chances, last-minute jitters, defensive lapses — it has been the same old sob story for the Indian hockey team at the World Cup, writes Ivninderpal Singh

The Indian hockey team has scored an unenviable hat-trick in the World Cup. This is the third consecutive time that they have been relegated to the playoffs for the 9th-12th positions. The decline of Indian hockey can be judged from the fact that the team lost just three matches in the first three editions of the tournament but have won just three of the 17 pool matches since 1998.

Coaches have come and gone. Veteran players like Dhanraj Pillay and Baljeet Dhillon faded away and many new faces appeared. But the story has remained the same — a lacklustre performance at the World Cup. Within five days of the start of the high-profile tournament at Monchengladbach, the dreams of a podium finish vanished.

The Indians failed to register a single win in the five pool matches, losing four and drawing one against lowly South Africa. Lacking spark, they failed to perform against the teams which are below them in the rankings. Their performance against England, who are placed 11th, and South Africa (10th) sealed their fate. Indians failed to capitalise on the chances and never came good at the right moment.

The main reason seems to be that Indian players fail to lift their game when they play at the highest level. They neither scored goals nor plugged loopholes in the defence. Moreover, last-minute blues haunted India in most of the matches.

Indians were leading against England, South Africa and Korea but conceded goals in the last 10 minutes, leading to acute embarrassment. Against Germany, too, India gifted a match-winning goal to the hosts in the last minute. The rivals don’t have to earn a win — “magnanimous” Indian players are there to help them.

Third-ranked Germany edged past sixth ranked India 3-2 in a seesaw match. But the Germans sounded the board in the last minute of the game to win the opener. The same thing happened in the match against England. This was India’s second successive defeat and by the same margin and same “style”. They conceded three consecutive goals in the 54th, 57th and 61st minutes of the game. In the third match against South Africa, India were leading by a goal but the Proteas scored an equaliser just seven minutes before the final hooter.

By now India had no chances for podium finish. But they could have performed better to salvage pride. However, they failed to rise to the occasion and squandered lead once again conceding two goals in the last seven minutes and “booked” a berth to play for the bottom four spots once again.

It is not the first time that India lost due to a lax approach and poor performance against weaker teams. In the 2002 World Cup in Malaysia, India opened their campaign against Japan but were held 2-2. The Indians managed just two wins and that too against Cuba and Poland and were placed sixth in the eight-team pool. But as the participant countries are 12 this time compared to 16 in the last edition, Indians showed their “determination” to stay at the same place in the pool.

At Utrecht in 1998, India lost their first three matches, losing 1-4 to Germany, 0-5 to Netherlands and 3-4 to South Korea to make a quick and undignified exit from the tournament. After winning 1-0 against New Zealand, they suffered a shocking 1-4 loss to Canada. A win against Canada would have put India in the playoffs for the 5th-8th positions but this humiliating loss relegated them to the matches for the last-four positions.

Though India have participated in every edition of the World Cup since its inception in 1971, they have finished on the podium just three times. Eight-time Olympic champions India have won the World Cup only once, in 1975 at Kuala Lumpur. Since 1975, India has not won any medal in the tournament, failing to even reach the semifinals, with one miserable performance after another. In contrast, arch-rivals Pakistan have gone from strength to strength, playing in six finals of the 11 World Cup tournaments held so far, winning a record four times and coming runners-up twice.

Dilip Tirkey’s men lost another chance to improve their track record in the World Cup. Though they failed on all fronts, India found a good forward in Shivendra Singh. Never counted among the “stars” of the team, Shivendra scored four of India’s seven goals in five pool matches. But all his efforts went in vain.

What is the future of Indian hockey? Should Vasudevan Baskaran be blamed for the fiasco and replaced with another coach? Resting on past laurels won’t be of any help. It is time to give a rethink on all issues concerning Indian hockey to stem the decline before it is too late.

Flawed genius
David Tremayne

After 246 races, 90 victories, 66 pole positions, 75 fastest laps and seven world championships, what will we finally make of Michael Schumacher? One of the sport’s most gifted practitioners and yet also one of its most controversial? Perhaps Bernie Ecclestone summarised it best when he suggested that every time anyone mentions Schumacher, they think of Formula One. The two became synonymous, and his retirement at the end of this season, which he announced after winning the Italian Grand Prix, will inevitably leave a huge void until the next big character emerges.

He has been one of motor racing's greatest stars. A man of his time who fought in a manner that has come to be acceptable to the majority if not always to the purists who remember that the other giants of the game - Juan Manuel Fangio, Alberto Ascari, Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, Gilles Villeneuve and Alain Prost - had no need to make contact with their rivals, nor made as many mistakes as he appeared to.

Schumacher was most like the late Ayrton Senna, who, for all his fabulous talents, is also remembered as the man who made the professional foul kosher, at least as far the sport’s management were concerned. And that in itself was deeply ironic, for it was Schumacher, back in Brazil in 1993, who had ranted plaintively in the post-race press conference as he accused Senna of adopting tactics to keep him behind that were “unacceptable”. He was a fast learner.

Like Senna, Schumacher had many faces. To those he worked with, he was a genius obsessed with every aspect of his vehicle's technology, a man of unquenchable competitive fire who hated to lose and loved racing for racing’s sake. “He once got beaten in a kart race,” Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn recalled. “We would see him at the factory quite a lot during the winter, but he was spending more and more time in the kart, until he got his revenge and beat the guy who had beaten him. That was what made him the kind of driver that he was.”

He was the man whose fantastic ability and intense focus helped Ferrari back from their wilderness years, and who, in 2000, finally became their first world champion since South African Jody Scheckter back in 1979. Had he not broken his leg at Silverstone in 1999, he would probably already have been champion eight times. He is the man for whom everyone at Maranello would have journeyed to hell and back.

Ferrari’s domination in recent years owes so much to Schumacher’s other-worldly blend of driving brilliance, the design and technical management skills of Rory Byrne and Ross Brawn, and the ability of the sporting director Jean Todt to meld this into a cohesive structure devoid of the polemics which were so rife. Todt, unsurprisingly, has always been unstinting in his praise for his driver, for he has been the man best placed to appreciate his true contribution.

“Michael has been the author of a unique chapter in the history of Formula One and of Ferrari in particular,” he said. “It has yet to reach its conclusion and what he has achieved extends over and above the results obtained. He is an exceptional man and will become a legend as a driver.

“Humanly, he is a great guy. He’s very mature, he loved driving, so for us it was fantastic to have him. He is very curious; he wants to know. He wants to understand everything.”

To his rivals — particularly men such as the 1996 champion Damon Hill — Schumacher was a different man, one who would intimidate without second thought, and who wanted to win at any cost. Hill discovered that when Schumacher turfed him off the road in Adelaide in 1994, to steal his first crown. In 1997, his default setting when overtaken by Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez was to turn into the French-Canadian’s Williams, but on that occasion the ploy backfired as Villeneuve went on to win the title.

Since then, Schumacher had redeemed himself in the eyes of the purists, as he stacked victory upon victory, many of them wins that owed everything to his fearsome commitment and consistency. Nobody in history has remained so competitive for so long.

Then came Monaco this year, and the embarrassment of his stupid effort to frustrate rival Fernando Alonso by wilfully parking his Ferrari at Rascasse.

It was such manoeuvres that generated the controversy that surrounded Schumacher throughout his career. But the very fact that as many people loathed him as loved him made him both hero and villain, and brought a massive intangible benefit to the sport via his global superstardom.

Notably, this son of a bricklayer from Kerpen, near Cologne, has become the first German winner and champion in the history of Formula One. A family man, he has had little to do with the so-called glamour of the sport apart from being one of the drivers’ leading spokesmen on safety and playing for their football team.

He has little idea of what he will do when he retires —but it is certain that he will play some role as an ambassador for Ferrari.

It was with a sense of theatre and perfect timing that he announced his retirement at Monza for it was here in 1991 that he was revealed as a Benetton driver after a secret overnight “transfer” from Jordan on the eve of the Italian Grand Prix.

Like Senna before him, Schumacher was flawed, but he will be remembered as a genius nevertheless.

— By arrangement with The Independent

IN THE NEWS
So long, Martina
Larry Fine

Martina Navratilova put a crowning gloss on her magnificent career by teaming up with Bob Bryan to win the US Open mixed doubles title.

It was a fitting way for Navratilova, who turns 50 next month, to hang up her racquet, her 59th Grand Slam title adding to a remarkable record that began when she turned professional in 1975.

She rose to the top of the women’s game with serve-and-volley brilliance, accumulating 167 singles and 177 women’s doubles titles. She was world number one for a total of 331 weeks.

Her Grand Slam haul includes 18 singles crowns, 31 women’s doubles and 10 mixed doubles titles.

“It’s entirely fitting, Martina that your last match would be winning another grand slam title,” said US Tennis Association president Franklin Johnson in presenting Navratilova and Bryan with their trophy and a $150,000 cheque.

“I have so many memories,” Navratilova, who won the first of her four US Open singles titles in 1983, said to a large Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd that stayed on after Maria Sharapova’s singles triumph over Justine Henin-Hardenne.

“Thank you for a great ride,” she said, echoing remarks made by Andre Agassi after his last career match earlier in the tournament.

“Like Andre said, I’ll take this memory with me for the rest of my life.”

Bryan, who ended the match with an ace, said: “I congratulate you on the best tennis career of all time.”

The Czech-born Navratilova, who became a US citizen in 1981, raised the level of the women’s game after transforming herself from a podgy teen-ager to a supremely fit athlete who dominated the women’s game.

Navratilova also had an impact off the court as WTA Tour players president for six years and as an openly gay athlete.

Navratilova has retired once before, in 1994, only to return in 2000.

This time, though, she says it is for real. “This was the last match. No more. No more,” she said.

Losing finalist in mixed doubles, Martin Damm, who earlier had teamed up with India’s Leander Paes to win the men’s doubles final, said he was thrilled to participate in the special occasion.

“I would like to congratulate Martina,” the Czech player said. “It’s been an unbelievable career.

“Obviously she has a lot of fans in the Czech Republic, where she was originally from, and I wish her the best in the after-life — the tennis after-life.” — Reuters

SPORTS MAIL

Historic win

Kudos to the Indian women’s cricket team for clinching their first-ever Test series win in England. The eves registered an emphatic five-wicket victory in the second Test to annex the two-match series 1-0.

Tarsem S. Bumrah, Batala

Sania’s downslide

After beating the higher-ranked Croatian Karolina Sprem 6-4, 6-2 in the first round of the US Open, it was sheer disappointment to watch Sania Mirza going down 7-5, 1-6, 2-6 to 14th seed Francesca Schiavone of Italy. Sania won the first set in a tie-breaker but lost the remaining two sets very tamely.

Her first serve, cross-court placings and shots were mostly off the mark and she committed many unforced errors. She also showed signs of fatigue. As a result, she could win only three games in the last two sets.

Most of the seeded players, present and past, have specialised either in singles or doubles. Sania should take a cue from Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes — former world No. 1 pair in doubles.

Sania had created euphoria among the masses by becoming the first Indian to reach the third round of the Australian Open and the fourth round of the US Open last year. Since then, she has been getting eliminated in the first or at the most second rounds of Grand Slam events.

D.K. Aggarwala, Hoshiarpur