But the failure goes deeper down, and trouble has been brewing for over 20 years now.

We need to start right at the bottom where we have only a handful of good coaches. Children are not learning the right things and they pick up bad habits in technique — our man-marking skills, over-dribbling, et cetera. These are mistakes that go unnoticed and ignored at the domestic level, but they will be badly punished at the international level, more so in the crunch matches.

On the immediate problem, I think our preparation was terrible. We needed to play many more competitive matches before going into this tournament. Britain prepared by playing the Champions Challenge; the only serious team we played in the lead-up was Belgium. In the last one year, we have played Australia only once, and not played Germany, Holland and Spain. We had three medals in the last year to show, and no doubt we played well at the Asia Cup, but Korea was the only real team we beat. Our string of big-margin wins also gave us a false sense of hope. That was six months ago, and we had been resting easy on that.

Right now, let us be honest, no international team is scared of us. Let us put our eight gold medals in perspective — it was different hockey altogether. It was on grass, for God’s sake. We have not had a single semi-final appearance in a major tournament on turf. We have barely 15-20 playable astroturfs all over India. I have played some club hockey in Germany. In Stuttgart alone, which is a small city, there were 15-20, on which boys in the age group 6-16 hone their basics. Where are our boys to hone their basics?

... contd.