- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE Indian women’s hockey team lost to Great Britain 3-4 in a pulsating bronze-medal game at the Oi Hockey Stadium in Tokyo Olympics on Friday (6). The women in blue, who made one of the most miraculous comebacks into the tournament after losing their first three games, lost to Argentina after taking a lead in the semi-finals. Against the Britons, too, they showed a lot of heart to come back from a 0-2 deficit to take a lead to eventually lose by one goal.
This is, however, India’s best performance at women’s hockey at the Olympics after 1980 when they finished fourth. They had ended up as the 12th and last team at the Rio Olympics in 2016, the edition in which India returned to women’s hockey.
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Sjoerd Marijne’s girls fought on level terms with Great Britain, the gold medallists at Rio, for most part of the game but went ahead by a goal after trailing 0-2 at one stage in the second quarter. Two brilliant dragflick goals by in-form Gurjit Kaur and another strike by Vandana Katariya saw India going into half-time with the lead.
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In the third quarter, the British players came back hard and skipper Hollie Pearne-Webb drew level five minutes into the quarter to join Elena Sian Reyer and Sarah Robertson, who had scored the first two for the European side.
With 12 minutes to go for the final whistle, Grace Balsdon scored the fourth and the winning goal for Britain from a penalty corner even though the defending champions were not doing too well in converting them. India goalkeeper Savita Punia, who has performed excellently throughout the tournament, would be disappointed for not being able to prevent the ball from beating her. This was India’s second loss to Britain in the tournament. They had lost 1-4 to the same opponents in the group stage.
The Indian women’s team lost their first three games to the Netherlands (1-5), Germany (0-2) and Britain before beating Ireland (1-0) and South Africa (4-3) to make the quarter-finals where they defeated favourites Australia 1-0.
The Indian men’s hockey team bagged the bronze on Thursday (5), scripting history for the country after 41 years.
