Hockey World Cup: India ‘choke’ against New Zealand amid high drama to exit title race | Hockey News

BHUBANESWAR: Totally disbelieving Indian team choked up amid drama hockey world cup here on Sunday, like New Zealand stunned the hosts in a sudden-death shootout (5-4) to advance to the quarter-finals and relegated the Tokyo Olympics bronze medalist to play the classification matches at Rourkela.
Twice leading by two goals – first 2-0 then 3-1, India’s defense couldn’t resist pressure from New Zealand who beat India at their own game to come back and finish the 60 minutes at 3-3.
As it happened: India vs New Zealand
The penalty shoot-out also ended 3-3, and the game went into sudden death, after veteran goalkeeper PR Sreejesh made a hat-trick of saves and the crowd at Kalinga Stadium slowly died down. moved to the edge of her seats and waited impatiently.
Sreejesh brought the hosts back single-handedly, saving New Zealand’s last two attempts in a regular shootout against Sam Lane and Sam Hiha to keep India in the chase and then got injured, but not before saving the Black Sticks skipper’s first one-on-one sudden death attempt Nic wood.
captain of india Harman Preet Singh had the golden opportunity to seal the game but his poor group stage form did not leave him as he attempted to slap the ball shortly after entering the circle, which was easily saved by New Zealand goalkeeper Leon Hayward, who had replaced Dominic Dixon in the shootout position.

Harmanpreet, Rajkumar Pal and Sukhjeet Singh scored for India in the shootout, while Abhishek and Shamsher Singh failed to beat Hayward at the post.
India had to bring Krishan Pathak in goal in place of the injured Sreejesh, but once Sam Lane scored and Shamsher missed the sudden death, the New Zealand players pinched each other before running to Hayward to celebrate the biggest upset of the World Cup to date. Before that, New Zealand had only beaten Chile in the group stage and lost to the Netherlands and Malaysia.
Rajkumar was the only India to score in sudden death.
Earlier in regulation, Lalit Upadhyay (18th minute), Sukhjeet Singh (25th) and Varun Kumar (41st) scored for India, while New Zealand’s comeback was scripted by Sam Lane (29th) , Kane Russell (44th) and Sean Findlay (50th).
Questions will be asked: why did India allow their two-goal lead to be erased twice? Why did the Indian defense buckle under pressure in the last 16 minutes? Why were four youngsters asked to handle the penalty shootout pressure when highly experienced players like Manpreet Singh (318 caps) and Akashdeep Singh (222) were not among the five? Why is ‘creating chances’ becoming rhetoric in Indian hockey? Why haven’t we been able to find a solution to our penalty corner problems for four games in a row at a World Cup.

Also on Sunday, the team got 11 penalty corners but could only convert two. And Harmanpreet Singh was once again a poor shadow of himself, failing to score on every drag-flick he attempted. The team are also responsible for what exactly former Dutch corner specialist Bram Lomans’ contributions were during the week-long camp he led last December.
New Zealand were down to 10 men for five of the final six minutes and 15 seconds when Nick Ross was shown a yellow card. But it was still the visitors who appeared the dominant team, despite having a short man on the pitch.
Graham Reid was at a loss for words at the press conference when some of the above questions were put to him by the media at Kalinga Stadium.
“They scored their second or third goal when we gave it back to them just after winning it, it gave them an opportunity. At this level you can’t do that.
India’s 48-year wait for a World Cup medal since winning the first trophy to date in 1975 will exceed five decades when the next World Cup arrives in 2026. The question around this sad piece of indian hockey the story put Reid in a tough spot.
“That’s an interesting and very good question. I don’t know the answer. I think at the end of the day you have to keep training and creating chances,” Reid said.
“As far as drills, training, everything else, we do what all the other teams do. I’ve been in this game for a long time and I know what other teams are doing. I don’t think he there’s got to be a quick fix. . I think after that we’ll try to find a way to get a mental coach involved. Maybe we need to do something different.”