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The Indian hockey team has departed for KL with a young squad and no ringing endorsements from their high performance Director. Some of the statements being trotted out by the various people involved in the selection and coaching of the team sound more like excuses, just in case the team doesn’t make it.
I guess the gods in hockey heaven (and the bosses at FIH) are desperate to get India to the world cup. So, going over the various permutations and combinations, I figured out India can still qualify without winning a single match in Asia Cup.
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So, under the world hockey league system of qualification, the following teams have qualified;
From World Hockey League Semi Final 1 (Johor Bahru, Malaysia);
GER, ARG, ENG as the top three finishers
Then Argentina won the Pan-American continental championships and since they had already qualified, 4th place finisher Korea took their spot as the 4th lucky loser.
From World Hockey League Semi Final 2 (Rotterdam, Netherland);
BEL, AUS, NED and NZL (NZL qualified as the NED are the hosts)
That left Malaysia (as the 5th place finisher in SF1) and Spain (as 5th place finisher in SF2) and India (as 6th place lucky loser, but only due to the fact that NZL got automatic qualification).
And the winners in the remaining continental championships (Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania) will qualify automatically. Currently, the TriFinance Euro Hockey Championships are going on in Boom (Antwerp) and it looks likely that the winner is going to come from either GER, BEL, ENG, NED (all already qualified) or ESP. So any one of them claiming victory will lead to Spain (FIH Ranking – 6th) qualifying as the 5th place finisher in the World Hockey League Semi Finals due to their FIH ranking being higher than Malaysia (FIH Ranking – 13th).
It is a foregone conclusion that either Australia or New Zealand will win the Oceania championships and since they both have qualified for the World Cup already, Malaysia will earn a qualification spot.
This leaves India a chance to qualify even if they don’t finish on the podium in Asia Cup as long as Pakistan doesn’t win the Cup. So, if Indian team makes it to the Semi Finals and losse, they and the few remaining hockey fans should just hope and pray that Pakistan doesn’t win the Asia Cup. If Malaysia or Korea lift the Asia Cup, members of the Indian Hockey team and the various hangers on in Hockey India can get their tickets booked to attend the 2014 Rabobank Hockey World Cup at the Hague.
This system of qualification is a lot interesting than actually qualifying by winning matches and of course, not to mention that it is very demeaning when I speak to my colleagues from the Netherlands, Australia and Germany.
