With four minutes for the final quarter to end, a rare error in the midfield by Ireland gave India their best opportunity of the match to score. Captain Rani Rampal stole the ball from the midfielder, rushed to the sparsely populated Irish circle from the right. Udita, to the captain’s left, in front of the net, had a better angle to strike the ball.

Rani, however, as she has done many times before, decided to save the team herself, keep it afloat in the contest amidst flickering hope and went for the goal. She has managed to score some stunning goals before. But not on Thursday. It was not her day. It was not India’s day. It was Ireland’s. Their goalkeeper just Ayeisha McFerran just had to extend her right leg to get rid of the ball and India’s final chance to equalise.

Ireland are ranked 16th in the world, six places below India. They are the lowest ranked side in their pool. They are playing their first World Cup in 16 years. They haven’t even booked their hotel accommodation in London beyond the quarter-finals stage. Before this World Cup, they hadn’t won a group game at this tournament for decades. Yet, on Thursday, they became the first team in the World Cup to book the quarter-final berth after pipping India 1-0.

The Irish spirit

“A quarter-final with a game to spare, if you had given me that before the tournament I would have snapped your hand off,” said Ireland’s head coach Graham Shaw after the match.

After the match, his hands were covering his mouth. He looked at his team huddling in the middle of the ground with screams of joy and at the bunch of face-painted Irish fans cheering one of their most famous win.

But except the possession and the number of goals scored, Ireland were the second best team in other key statistics. They had one-third of India’s shots on goals (5-15), almost one-third of circle entries (10-27) and four penalty corners fewer than their higher-ranked opponents. Yet they managed to triumph. Because, on Thursday, it wasn’t about the numbers as much as it was about the spirit.

Perhaps the numbers that matter aren’t available. It would be interesting to see the work-rate of both teams. For, the Irish women, on a hot and humid day at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, seemed to exhaust every bit of their energy and manufacture more when it was needed to fend off the Indians, who sought an equaliser desperately once the Green Machine scored towards the end of first quarter.

Anna O’Flanagan’s little deflection of Shirley McCay’s penalty corner drag-flick to the top corner of the Indian net was enough for the Irish team to record one of their most famous win in the World Cup.

“For our first World Cup in 16 years and to make the quarter-finals with a game in hand is great. It’s not every Ireland team that can say something like that,” Ireland goalkeeper Ayeisha McFerran told BT Sport after the game.

The Great Green Wall of Defence

It wasn’t that India didn’t try at all. Their sluggishness in the first 10 minutes of the first quarter cost them a goal. But India were all over Ireland in the last few minutes of the quarter. But Ireland held them off.

In the second quarter, they had a moment of anxiety when their ‘keeper almost deflected a long-range strike from Vandana Katariya into the top corner of her own net. But otherwise, the Irish defence was top class.

“We knew, coming into this game that our defence has to be rock solid. It was that way in the first half and I hope it continues to be that way in the second half as well,” Ireland’s goal scorer Anna O’Flanagan said after the first half.

And her hopes were realised. That India played their A-game only in intermittent phases helped the lower-ranked team.

The finishing of the women in blue came under scrutiny again. Rani’s miss in the final quarter apart, there were quite a few times that India came close to the Irish net in their 27 circle penetrations. But on a day when it mattered a lot, the team had a collective failure of finishing. The penalty corner conversion – rather the lack of it – once again became an obvious reason for the downfall of the team.

Coach Sjoerd Marijne’s post-match comments reiterated the afore-mentioned issues.

“We had numerous opportunities to score. But they really did well. In hockey, the one who scores matters more than the one who creates more chances. We made good interceptions – I am satisfied with that – but we failed to make the most of it.”

Despite the loss – and the glum faces of the women in blue after the match – Marijne said that the team’s confidence is unaffected. And, confidence, India would need to muster as much as they can before taking on USA in a contest they can’t afford to lose.