Harpal Singh Bedi
New Delhi, 30 March: With the FIH Hockey Pro League 2022/23 season nearing its midway point, India’s blistering form at the Rourkela mini-tournament -where they picked up 11 out of 12 possible points against Germany and Australia- has taken them to the top of the table with 19 points from their 8 matches.
As per the FIH media release, ace drag-flicker and India captain Harmanpreet Singh is the leading scorer with 11 goals at this stage of the tournament. Also, the men in blue continuing with their free-flowing style of attacking hockey are the top scorers in the tournament, scoring 31 goals in their 8 games.
Spain who won 3 out of 4 games in the mini-tournament in Australia against the hosts and Argentina sit in the second place, trailing India by 2 points.
Argentina have played 12 out of their 16 matches and are currently in third place with 13 points.
Germany and Australia have had staggered starts to their campaigns and find themselves in the 4th and 6th spots, on either side of Great Britain.
But while Germany and Australia are on 11 and 8 points respectively from their 8 games, Great Britain have taken their 9 points from just 4 encounters.
Belgium, Netherlands and New Zealand occupy the final three spots, with each team having played 4 games so far.
Belgium has two wins and two losses for 6 points, while defending champions Netherlands have 5 and New Zealand have 2.
In the Women competition, Argentina is the only team to have played 12 games so far in the competition, which sees them sit at the top of the table with 23 points.
The Leonas, who went through all of the 2021/22 campaign unbeaten in regulation time, have suffered 3 outright losses and 2 shoot-out losses this season, which gives other teams an opportunity to catch up with them through the games in hand.
Australia, Germany and Netherlands sit in the next three spots with 15, 13 and 12 points respectively. Australia and Germany have played 8 games each but the biggest threat comes from Olympic and World Champions, the Dutch who have secured 12 points from just 4 matches, winning all of them.
In a competitive season, China and USA have produced exciting hockey to currently occupy 5th and 6th spot on the table taking 10 and 7 points from their respective 8 games. New Zealand are currently placed below them, taking 5 points from their opening four games at home.
Belgium and Great Britain are in the final two spots, with Belgium also on 5 points from 4 games, while Great Britain had a tough start to their season losing all 4 opening games and remain the only team yet to open their points account.
Stats at a glance:
A total of 233 goals have been scored so far in the 60 games across both men’s and women’s competition. 133 of those goals have come from the 30 men’s matches at an average of 4.4 goals per game! In the women’s tournament 100 goals have been scored in 30 games at an average of 3.3 goals per game.
Argentina lead the way in the women’s tournament with 21 goals from their 12 games, but it’s Netherlands who have the best goals-to-game ratio, scoring 13 times in their 4 games.
Interestingly, in the men’s competition field goals makeup less than 50% of all goals scored, with 66 of the 133 goals coming from open play, while 55 goals have come through penalty corners and 12 goals have come from penalty strokes.
A bigger share of goals in the women’s tournament come from open play as 58 of the 100 goals scored have been field goals, with 35 goals scored via penalty corners and 7 more through penalty strokes.
Women’s Top Scorer: Maria Granatto, ARG (6 goals)