BHUBANESWAR: India's title hopes at the Hockey World Cup ended in an anti-climax. For a second consecutive World Cup at home, the team failed to live up to its expectations and will now finish outside of the top eight.
The fiasco has been hotly debated ever since India's defeat in the crossovers against New Zealand and the resultant failure to make it to the quarterfinals. The position of chief coach Graham Reid, India's failure to fix penalty corner woes in the pool stage and lack of mental toughness in crunch situations are the issues that will be central to the postmortem of performance.
