The Indian men’s hockey team will have to guard against complacency when it takes on lower-ranked Russia, while a tricky contest awaits their female counterparts against USA in the two-legged Olympic qualifiers on Friday.
Both the Indian teams are just two matches away from booking their tickets to Tokyo.
While the Manpreet Singh-led men’s team is up against an easy opponent in world no.22 Russia, the Indian women have a relatively difficult task at hand as they face the American girls in the final round of the FIH Olympic Qualifiers.
Both the Indian teams will play back-to-back matches against Russia and USA on Friday and Saturday and the aggregate winners at the end of the two-match qualifier (each for men and women) will seal their places in the 2020 Tokyo Games.
On paper, the Indian men, ranked fifth in the world, are expected to have a cakewalk against the Russians.
While the men would expect an easy outing against the Russians, the scenario is completely different for the women as they are up against world no. 13 USA against whom they have a dismal 4-22 win-loss record.
But past records hardly matters in professional sport and the current Indian women’s team, led by Rani Rampal, is a much-improved outfit from their predecessors.
For Indian women, besides skipper Rani, dragflicker Gurjit Kaur, young forward Lalremsiami and goalkeeper Savita hold key to the team’ fortune.
Besides handling USA, they also have to handle the crowd pressure as it is the first time that they will get to play in front of a packed 16,000 capacity Kalinga Stadium here.
India women’s team chief coach Sjoerd Marijne exuded confidence saying his wards are prepared for the contest.
