HI forms panel to review India's shoddy performance in WC

Hockey India today constituted a strong 11-member committee to evaluate India's pathetic performance in the ongoing World Cup at The Hague, Netherlands.
India finished fifth in the six-team preliminary Group A, winning just one match and drawing one from their five outings. The fifth-place finish meant India will not be able to improve or retain their eight position of the 2010 World Cup in New Delhi.
India, who were ranked No 8 going into the World Cup, will now play for the ninth position play-off against Asian champions South Korea on Saturday.
The committee -- named as Team, Coaching and High Performance Evaluation Committee -- will consists of nine former players, a representative from the Sports Authority of India besides HI secretary general Narinder Batra as the chairman.

The former players, who will be part of the panel which will conduct post mortem of the team's performance, are Harbinder Singh, Ajit Pal Singh, Col Balbir Singh, B P Govinda, Ashok Kumar, S S Grewal, Jagbir Singh, A B Subbaiah and Samir Dad.
HI's chief executive officer Elena Norman has been named as the convenor of the committee.
"The above has been necessitated after observing the men's team's performance in the 2014 World Cup at The Hague," HI secretary general Narinder Batra said in a statement.
"We should only be thankful to the team goalkeeper P R Sreejesh that we did not finish at the bottom of the pool to play for 11 and 12 positions, nothing could have been worse than that," he said.