Chandigarh: “The expectations of my position have been entirely unrealistic. Given no support staff, impossible travelling and living arrangements, no tools of trade or freedom to act, the whole thing has proved very difficult if not impossible. Notwithstanding this difficult situation, I have fulfilled the conditions of the contract and according to its parameters, am offering my resignation.”
The above mentioned statement is an excerpt from the resignation letter, dated June 25, 2008, of Australian hockey legend Ric Charlesworth who was appointed Technical Advisor to Indian hockey .
The relevance of the statement is related to the termination order issued to Indian cycling coach Otakar Josef Dolezel, a native of Canada, by the Cycling Federation of India (CFI) last week.
While CFI claimed the orders were issued “because of his demanding behaviour”, Dolezel said all he wanted was “proper training facilities for wards”.
All this points to the fact that Indian sports authorities have somehow failed to tackle issues related to handling foreign coaches they recruit for different sports.
While Charlesworth claimed that despite being informally offered the post of national coach, nothing was done to provide necessary support to fulfil the offer, Dolezel told TOI that he was told people were not comfortable with his working style, as he’s a strict disciplinarian and made undue demands like proper equipment and adequate technical support.
Another common factor between Charlesworth and Dolezel is that both claimed that they weren’t paid their dues. While Charlesworth maintained that the promise made by Indian Hockey Federation and Sports Authority of India of clearing all outstanding dues wasn’t fulfilled, Dolezel claimed that he didn’t receive salary for the past three months.
However, when contacted, Karamvir Singh, CFI secretary general, refuted the allegations. “Dolezel demanded that he be paid in cash. But we went by rules and paid him salary through cheque and asked for his account number. He refused to give us the account number and accept the cheque. He even misbehaved with coaches and the trainees time and again. This forced us to request SAI to withdraw him,” he said.
Another foreign coach who stepped down because of not living up to the expectations of BCCI is Greg Chappell, who resigned from post of national cricket coach after India’s disastrous performance in last year’s World Cup. Though his contract was up to World Cup, he didn’t seek an extension citing “family and personal reasons” for his reason to quit.
But all said, one thing can’t be argued that both these coaches found coping with those heading the respective sporting bodies they were associated with tough. It may be mentioned here that India’s golden boy Abhinav Bindra said recently that BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra heads Archery Federation of India since 1973. Priya Ranjan Das Munshi presides over AIFF since 1988. When he took over India was ranked around 95 in world football. Now it is 153. The truth is that politicians heading sports bodies have abysmally failed to deliver. They should make way for professionals. Professionalising sports bodies is a pre-condition to excelling in any sport.
Also, foreign coaches come to India with a pre-conceived notion that facilities will be state-of-the-art and those heading sports associations will have proper knowledge of the game they are handling.
However, reality tells a different story, as facilities aren’t adequate and those sitting at the helm of associations lack sporting background and have little knowledge about the games, which they are supposed to promote in a professional manner.
This results in a big gap, which makes the job of foreign coaches all the more difficult.