KUALA LUMPUR: The women's Asia Cup in Muscat, Oman, has completed its group stages and the elite teams will now be playing for the title.
India, Japan, South Korea and China are of Asian Games standard and will play in the semi-finals on Wednesday. The four teams have qualified for the World Cup, jointly hosted by Spain and the Netherlands, on July 1-17.
The other four — Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand — are of Sea Games level and will fight tooth-and-nail to finish fifth.
The Malaysian Tigresses will play Indonesia while Thailand meet Singapore on Wednesday, with the winners playing for the fifth position.
Nasihin Nubli's side finished third in Group A with their only win recorded against Singapore (2-0).
Malaysia were thrashed 9-0 by India and 8-0 by Japan in the other group matches.
Indonesia finished bottom of Group B following defeats to South Korea (7-0), China (7-0) and Thailand (4-0).
World No 21 Malaysia are expected to beat 42nd-ranked Indonesia on Wednesday.
In their last encounter at the 2018 Hockey Series Open, Malaysia thrashed Indonesia 18-0 at the Sengkang Stadium in Singapore.
But many senior players have retired since, and Nasihin is left with novices to build a team over the next four years.
They had struggled against Singapore and will find Indonesia harder to beat at the Sultan Qaboos Stadium.
"The team gave their best against Japan (on Monday), which was a massive physical, mental and emotional effort. They went through two high-scoring matches, but the coaching team are proud of their courage playing against Olympic-level teams.
"We believe they will have the same positive attitude in the classification matches," said Malaysian Hockey Confederation (MHC) technical director Paul Revington.
Indonesia are made up of players with 17 or fewer caps, while Malaysia have five players with more than 80 international matches.
Malaysia were fifth in the 2007, 2009, 2013, 2017 editions and hope to be fifth time lucky in Muscat.
But they must first beat Indonesia, followed by another tough match against a possible Thailand side to achieve their target.