Down but not out

BURIRAM: An entire country was holding its breath as the Indian team marched out for an important match. 

Fans clad in blue were trooping out of buses outside the stadium while #BackTheBlue had started trending from morning. In a parallel universe, that might have been India’s football team.

Not in this one. Around the same time when India’s cricketers started their World Cup campaign, the footballers too trotted out for a match that witnessed a couple of landmarks. This was Igor Stimac’s first match in charge as the team’s new coach, the start of a new dawn, and he marked it with no less than six debuts. Sunil Chhetri overtook Baichung Bhutia to become India’s most-capped footballer and he celebrated that by converting a penalty. Amarjit Singh became the first player to transition from India’s U-17 World Cup team to the senior side. All with less than a dozen travelling fans and a couple of Indian flags to witness, and in a match that was nothing more than a warm-up act to the home side taking on Vietnam later on.

The 1-3 King’s Cup reverse to Curacao at the Chang Arena — ranked 19 places above India in the FIFA table — might not have been an ideal afternoon but the dark clouds that hovered over the stadium at close of play had their silver linings. Stimac likened the game to the weather after the game and he was not wrong. The sun was out in the first half as Indians struggled to catch their breath in the heat and humidity. 
The Curacao players, who had landed in Buriram a full week before the match, did not seem as inconvenienced. The new-look central defensive partnership of Sandesh Jhingan and Rahul Bheke were torn apart regularly by the Curacao attackers, who are used to taking on a better class of defenders. Among the scorers were Elson Hooi from Eredivisie club ADO Den Haag and Leandro Bacuna from Premier League side Cardiff City. 

At 1-3, India looked set for a right thrashing at half-time. The players did not even get to go to the dressing room at halftime as Stimac sat them down near the touchline while the sprinklers desperately tried to avoid them. The Croatian had an explanation for that rather unorthodox halftime team talk. “It was a seven-minute walk to the dressing room and I did not want to waste that time,” he said. “And I did not want the players to go from the hot sun to the air-conditioned room and back again.”

But, as the teams lined up for the second half, the sun disappeared and the thunderclaps began to be heard around the stadium nicknamed ‘Thunder Castle’. Stimac made a few tweaks and sent on Michael Soosairaj, Raynier Fernandes and Amarjit to join Bheke and Sahal Abdul Samad, who had made their debuts earlier. With five debutants on the pitch, India suddenly looked fresh, invigorated. Though Gurpreet Singh Sandhu did have to pull off a couple of saves, the Indians too threatened, only to be undone by the lack of a final shot.

Stimac may have something to build on, but he also has a lot of problems to solve. “The one good thing is that Indians are quick learners,” he said. “I can tell you that in the eight days that we have been together, they have changed their movements, their passing so much!”
They better be, for they have a lot to learn!