Olympian Jagbir to become India’s next hockey coach?

OLYMPIAN Jagbir Singh is tipped to be the frontrunner to take over from coach A K Bansal as the Indian Olympic Association’s ad-hoc committee pre pares to brief the sports ministry next week on its plans for hockey’s development in the country.

The meeting was scheduled to take place on Thursday but has been postponed to July 30. “We were supposed to have a meeting with the sports ministry tomorrow, but we’ll now meet on July 30.

We will give them a roadmap of how we are supposed to take the game forward till 2010. We will also brief them on the team management and administration for the next two years,” ad-hoc committee convener Mohammad Aslam Khan said.

While Khan refused to comment on the coach issue, insiders hint that Jagbir, a former India captain, may replace Bansal despite the fact that the latter guided India to a silver medal at the Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia and, recently, the junior team to the title at the Asia Cup.

Bansal took the reins of the Indian team in May after chief coach Joaquim Carvalho quit in the wake of the dissolution of the KPS Gill-led Indian Hockey Federation.

However, chairman of the selection panel Aslam Sher Khan made it clear that any such move would be met with stiff resistance. “I think Bansal is doing a great job and there is no need to replace him. For the first time, there is some sort of stability in the team management.

“If they are planning to remove him and bring in someone else, we will protest that,” he added.

Prabhjot nominated

PRABHJOT Singh is the only hockey player to be recommended for the Arjuna Awards by the Indian Olympic Association’s ad-hoc panel this year. “Prabhjot was the only one who had approached us before May 30 which was the Sports Ministry’s deadline for nominating names,” said Khan.

“The Ministry had sent forms in April but we were not in the control of hockey at that time so those forms must have gone to the previous IHF,” he said.

Aslam said even though no other player approached the administration to be nominated for the award, the panel could have sat and proposed some names but it was too late now.