The Tribune: After Asia, got to rise in world: Oltmans

Hockey coach says India have a serious chance to win a medal at the World Cup and Olympics

By Sabi Hussain

India’s chief hockey coach Roelant Oltmans is a difficult man to please. Two days after guiding the national team to the gold medal at the Asian Champions Trophy, the 62-year-old Dutchman is already busy setting new goals for the team, which include a podium finish at the 2018 World Cup in Bhubaneswar and culminate with a medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Oltmans, in his own words, now has more “freedom and time” to devote to coaching and lead the Indian team till the Tokyo Games after getting a four-year extension. This time, Oltmans would be purely working as the chief coach, while Australia’s David Ian John would take over the mantle of high performance director.

For Oltmans, with India’s experienced and young players performing consistently in tandem at the international competitions, the Asian Champions Trophy triumph has “started a new episode” where the team has to continuously set “new benchmarks” to beat tough sides from Europe, Australia and South America.

Oltmans spoke to The Tribune on the team’s return from Malaysia. Excerpts:

What’s your takeaway from the Asian Champions Trophy title win?

Winning a tournament is always good, but the way we did it was certainly a huge boost for the entire team. It’s no mean feat to become No. 1 in Asia for the second time in a row. It’s good to see youngsters such as Afaan Yousuf, Pradeep Mor and Talwinder Singh rising to the occasion and stepping up in the absence of some of the senior players. They got the chance to showcase their skills and they performed impressively. Apart from them, the seniors were terrific, especially Rupinder Pal Singh with his penalty corner conversions. I am pleased with the overall performance. It’s the start of a new episode for us. But there are teams from Europe, Australia and South America above us in the world ranking, so there’s still a lot to be achieved in terms of results.

How special was it to beat Pakistan twice?

I wasn’t only focusing on Pakistan… The focus was to win the tournament. We did beat Pakistan twice, which was simply great. We all knew how important those wins were for us. Not only were we playing our arch-rivals but also the whole country was watching us. The boys showed plenty of resolve and determination.

In the next World Cup and Olympics, some of the senior players may not be there. In that context, how do you assess India’s bench strength?

Well, things are obviously moving in the right direction as far as our juniors are concerned. We need these experienced players for the World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics but, at the same time, we need to have a strong pool of juniors, which we thankfully have. We will be trying different combinations in the coming international events. Our focus, most importantly, is on the Junior World Cup in Lucknow in December. That will give us a good picture of our bench strength.

Now that you would be focusing only on the job of chief coach, how do you plan to build the team for the Tokyo Olympics?

The process has already started. The process is to finish at the podium in the World Cup and Olympics. I have always said that it takes four to six years to build a team before you become a serious medal contender at the Olympics. Being the chief coach, it gives me the freedom and opportunity to solely focus on the improvement part. I would be watching a lot more videos, planning the combination and preparing the strategies…. No more doing some of the odd jobs as high performance director. I would be taking care of the performance part of the team — that’s it. The World Cup in India would provide us a chance to see where we stand before the Olympics. We have a serious chance to win a medal at the World Cup and Olympics and that’s what I am aiming for. Probably, Tokyo would be my last Olympics with the Indian team, and otherwise also. It would be great to leave on a high.

Sardar Singh was terrific. Your thoughts…

Sardar is a great player. He showed as a midfielder what he is capable of. He not only defended, but created goal-scoring opportunities too. The way he prepared Ramandeep’s goal against South Korea in the semifinal was just fantastic. This is what we would like to see of him more often. He was the best player in the final… It shows that he is reinventing himself.