Indian hockey: No method in this madness

Batra calls up nine players, coaches kept away

Harpreet Kaur Lamba

What is wrong with Indian hockey? This is a question that every hockey follower asks year after year, tournament after tournament.

A lot has changed in Indian hockey over the last few years, be it players, coaches or even administration.

But despite all this, there has been no real progress.

Thursday morning marked the opening day of the national squad’s preparations in New Delhi, for the XX Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

But instead nine players — of the 18 those who participated in the recent World Cup in Holland where the team finished ninth — were sitting in Hockey India secretary Narinder Batra’s office, who wanted to know why India’s penalty corner conversion rate had been so poor at the quadrennial event.

Surprisingly, none of the coaches were present, nor was high performance director Roelant Oltmans, a man brought to put in place a system to take the country’s hockey ahead, involved.

In a week’s time, an 11-member committee will gather in the capital to evaluate the team’s performance at the Hague event, and also that of coach Terry Walsh who was roped in eight months ago. But the lack of transparency in how Hockey India functions was clear from Thursday’s incident. Nor was there any clarity on Batra’s qualifications in the matter.

Said a player, “Everyone is confused. All the nine players were called upon individually and were asked questions about how they missed so many corners, training methods, what went wrong, etc. No one knows what the other was asked or told.

“If the exercise was all about finding what went wrong with penalty corner drills, the players should have at least sat together and expressed their views.”

Given the nature of the closed door meetings — which went on for three hours — it was only logical to involve the high-profile coaching unit to work towards a collective solution, but Batra’s decision to bypass them all and involve the players directly sends out mixed signals.

It also brought into question the role of Oltmans, who has spent close to two decades coaching top teams and is considered an expert in modern hockey.

This is not the first time that short term goals have been expected of top coaches. The legendary Ric Charlesworth left India after only six months in the job, while Spain’s Jose Brasa — who helped India land medals in the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games in a single year — was not retained because he was vocal about the practice of favouritism and lack of transparency in the Indian system.

While a review is always welcome, how can 11 people most of whom are far removed from modern hockey be better judges than those appointed for the job — and are being paid in lakhs — is open to question.

Oltmans was the first one to point this out. In an interview to a website during the World Cup, he had questioned the formation of the committee and even its timing.

“What is really surprising is that some people do not know or see what is going on here (at the Hague in Holland). Comments from all corners, especially from our own administration, are really inappropriate,” Oltmans had said.

And even though he now reckons that he will speak only after the review committee meeting and is “open to the idea of many heads evaluating” India’s performance, it is apparent that the Dutchman is not too pleased with the idea.

The committee to be chaired by Batra had initially sought independent reports on India’s below-par performance from the coaching staff, including Oltmans, Walsh and India coaches M.K. Kaushik and Sandeep Sangwan.

It is now learnt that Batra has asked both Kaushik and Sangwan to stay away from the meeting beginning July 3, following the duo’s comments to the media where they backed Walsh and Oltmans. Sangwan has further been asked to work only with the junior team.

Oltmans’s view during an interview in Holland sums up the situation aptly. “If I tell you something… And we all make a big circle where people keep passing the message. In the end, it’s coming back to me, your word is completely changed. And that’s what is exactly happening in this country. We need to stop that.

“We should understand that if you appoint people and give them their roles, you should give them the mandate to do their job properly,” the Dutchman had said.

Is Batra listening?