How the Indian hockey team made it to the Olympics knockout stages after 36 years?

The red letters days that began with a bang in the year 1928 and continued to adorn the history of Indian hockey ever so often until the 1970s did begin to dwindle in the '80s.

While it was Pakistan who ended India's gold-medal-winning spree in 1960, several other teams like Australia, West Germany, and the Netherlands came to the fore in the decade that followed to open up world hockey like never before.

The dominance of the Indian subcontinent, in field hockey, was soon to end in a manner that few could have fathomed possible.

With the exception of a bronze for Pakistan in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, teams from the subcontinent have failed to finish on the Games podium ever since the Men in Green won gold in 1984 which followed India's Moscow triumph.

Even so, few could ever have imagined that a day would indeed arrive when an Olympic field hockey competition would take place without the presence of India - who boast of a near-unassailable record in the tournament.

On March 9, 2008 a nervous Indian side conceded two early goals against Great Britain in the final of the Olympic qualifiers at Santiago, Chile, and the 0-2 score line told a sorrowful tale of Indian hockey having reached its absolute nadir.

Clawing back from the brink

For the first time in Olympic history, the Games at Beijing, in 2008, witnessed a hockey competition sans India, prompting the world media to analyse the disastrous fall of the former giants of the game while fans back home mourned inconsolably.

The hara-kiri continued as the Indians lost the 2010 Asian Games semifinal to Malaysia and were forced into the qualifiers yet again, this time making it to London 2012 via a relatively simpler qualification route.

Michael Nobbs' side may not have been medal-favourites at London, but even so, a 12th-place finish was the last thing the Indian hockey fraternity were expecting, and not surprisingly the Australian coach headed home a year later.

How then did an Indian hockey team written off by all and sundry make it to an Olympic knockout in 2016 after a gap of 36 years?

The resurrection that preceded Rio 2016

Cynics argue that the Indians were benefited by a change of format that involved the introduction of a quarter-final that gave two extra teams in both groups the opportunity to test their mettle in the knock-outs.

A closer look at all that transpired in the lead up to, and the aftermath of Rio, paints a different picture - one that points to a definite resurrection that began with India's Asian Games win in 2014.

At the 2014 Champions Trophy, the gutsy Indians got past the Dutch in the group phase before beating Belgium in the quarter-finals, and lost to a strong Pakistan side narrowly in the semis.

A rare win and a draw against the Australians in the Raipur tests in 2015 close on the heels of a victory against the Aussies at the Azlan Shah Cup early that year signalled the growth of a side which was afraid of no other.

A Champions Trophy silver following a controversial loss to Australia on the eve of the 2016 Olympics was quite enough to boost the morale of a team on the ascendancy which was reemphasized by the results in Rio.

A victory over eventual Olympic gold-medalists Argentina in the group phase in 2016 was no mean feat, but a few defensive lapses cost the Indians dear in encounters that followed.

Almost there - but, not quite!!

A last-minute goal from Christopher Ruhr robbed India of a vital point in Group B as the Germans sneaked ahead 2-1 while Mink van der Weeden scored late off a PC for the Dutch to notch up a win by an identical margin against Manpreet Singh's team.

Hopes soared as the Indians sailed into the quarter-finals but a nation watched in dismay and collective disbelief as Roelant Oltmans' boys lost to eventual silver-medalists Belgium by a 1-3 margin.

Fans, however, welcomed the arrival of a new-look Indian team that haven't looked back since - also, acknowledging that the boys lost to worthy opposition in the form of a Belgian outfit who now rule the world of hockey thanks to their consistency at the top.

Indeed, a few more points in the bag, and Oltmans' side might well have run into relatively easier adversaries such as Spain - or Australia, who had begun to struggle against the Indians like never before.

Incidentally, the Aussies were thrashed 0-4 by the Netherlands in the quarter-finals which prodded the retrospective theory that India would have been off playing the kookaburras instead of Belgium who went on to become world champions.

The Rio quarter-finalists kept the momentum going under coach Sjoerd Marijne with a bronze at the Hero World League Finals in 2017 and a Champions Trophy silver with Harendra Singh at the helm.

Most importantly, however, the Indians who up until the Commonwealth Games of 2014 habitually lost by huge margins against sides like Australia now make sure they never gave in without an all-out fight.

So much so, that it has now been quite a while since the Indians have been walloped by any side like they were in the past which speaks volumes of the tenacity of the current crop.

India's arch-rivals Pakistan have failed to qualify for Tokyo 2020 even as Graham Reid's team find themselves touted as potential medal-winners.

Coach Reid, however, is well aware that no tournament is harder to win than the Olympics - after all, if the once-indomitable Aussies could win no more than one Olympic gold, every Tokyo-bound side will appreciate the enormity of the task on hand.

For the Indians, there is also history at stake - which just might help this incredibly talented and determined group of players to up the ante and raise the bar with a million loyal fans praying for success from afar.

The two back-to-back opening matches against New Zealand and Australia may prove to be the most vital of all, and set the tone for the rest of the competition, as the Indians look to go well beyond where they ended the Olympic Hockey Centre at Rio.