The Indian women's hockey squad is in Pool A with England, Canada, Wales, and Ghana.

The Indian women's hockey team will try to put the ghosts of a catastrophic World Cup campaign to rest by thrashing underdogs Ghana in the Commonwealth Games opening on Thursday with a podium finish in sight. The hosts, England, Canada, Wales, and Ghana are grouped in Pool A with the Indian ladies, while Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Scotland, and Kenya make up Pool B. The Indian ladies, like their male counterparts, left the most recent Games in Gold Coast empty-handed. They placed fourth after losing to England, 0-6, in the bronze medal play-off match.

The Indian women's underwhelming performance at the just-concluded World Cup in Spain and the Netherlands, when the Savita Punia-led team placed a dismal eighth, must have tormented them going into the Games.

And the team led by Janneke Schopman would be eager to show that it is a far superior team than what the previous results suggest. They would be eager to disprove the notion held by their critics that their record fourth-place performance at the Tokyo Olympics last year was just a coincidence.
The Indian ladies will also like to end a 16-year medal drought that had occurred at these Games. India's final CWG medal, silver, came to Melbourne in 2006.

In addition to their outstanding Olympic performance, the Indians will benefit from their creditable third-place result in their inaugural Pro League game this season.
The ninth-ranked Indians, however, must defeat the top-ranked teams in the world—No. 3 Australia, No. 5 England, and No. 8 New Zealand—in order to get on the podium.
The Trans-Tasman rivals will like their chances in these Games as well after New Zealand defeated Australia to win the gold in the previous edition of the competition.

Australia has dominated women's hockey at the CWG, winning up to four gold, one silver, and three bronze medals.

While it is anticipated that India will cruise through their initial two group matches against the No. 30 ranked Ghana and No. 24 ranked Wales (on Saturday), Savita's team will face its first major test against England on August 2 before wrapping up their pool play against the No. 15 ranked Canada.

India and England are the apparent favourites from Group A, barring a major upset, since the top two teams from each pool advance to the semifinals.

However, the most recent World Cup exposed several weaknesses in India's defence that they must rectify right away.

While penalty corner conversions continue to be a key worry for Indian women, the attacking line also has to step up its game.

The Indians had many open-play and penalty corner scoring chances at the most recent World Cup, but they missed most of them.

Coach Schopman is anticipating a significantly greater performance from her forwards and drag-flicker Gurjit Kaur.

In the other Pool, Canada will play Wales in the day's main event.