LONG TIME COMING, CR KUMAR REAPS DRONOCHARYA REWARD

K ARUMUGAM & ERROL D’CRUZ

It may have arrived two decades late but that doesn’t come in the way of CR Kumar relishing being nominated by Hockey India for the 2021 Dronacharya award that recognizes outstanding coaching.

An articulate thinker of the game, Kumar had moulded the 2001 Jr World Cup-winning squad that sparked an Indian hockey renaissance in the first few years of the millennium.

But perplexingly he was sidelined shortly before the team set out for Hobart, Australia, where they created history by winning the country’s first-ever Junior World Cup title.

“I would have received the honour then,” said the Chennai-based former forward for India and Railways. “But I have no ill-feeling about the delay. I am blessed and feel very happy that the award has come my way at last,” he said. “And I certainly have no resentment against Rajinder Singh, the coach who replaced me for the Hobart campaign”.

“I always have had confidence in my abilities and qualifications which is why I applied for the award in the first place. It’s human to feel hurt when the award went to less qualified candidates but I have nothing against nor any misunderstanding with winners of the award. “It’s a reward for serving men’s and women’s teams for decades and I am particularly indebted to my family for their support right through my career.”

Kumar’s dedication to the cause came with sacrifice. “I missed Diwali and birthdays,” he said. “I even missed my daughter Sunanda’s gold medal convocation after she completed her B. Tech in fashion technology. I am blessed with the support I received from my wife Vijayalaxmi,” said the 60-year-old Kumar who donned the India shirt at the 1982 Junior World Cup in Kuala Lumpur and several senior international matches from 1986-1991.

Another success under the tutelage of CR Kumar’s coaching

Kumar has had to surpass challenges aplenty during his coaching career. The biggest, however, has been coaching women’s teams.

“It’s far tougher coaching women. The majority of girls come from rural, farming backgrounds and getting them to understand what we expect of them, not just in the hockey context, is difficult. We can’t blame them. It’s an educational and cultural thing and it takes them about two years to understand things. It’s different for the boys who do so in a matter of months,” Kumar explained.

“So, aspects like nutrition and fitness take time to be imbibed by the girls and it contrasts teams in the West – Ireland for example — whose players are highly educated, even professionally qualified.

“Our team that did well at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (finishing fourth) was a product developed over 10 years,” Kumar pointed out.

An employee of Southern Railway before he retired last year, Kumar is an FIH High Performance coach, having attained the grade in Amsterdam in 1999.

Assistant coach to Vasudevan Baskaran at the 1998 Utrecht World Cup, he stepped into the breach when Cedric D’Souza was shown the door midway through the 2002 World Cup in Kuala Lumpur.

He then had a fairly long stint with the Malaysian national women’s team for a few years but returned as head coach of India’s women’s squad.

After a setback when the team failed to qualify for the London 2012 Olympics at a qualifying tournament in Delhi that year, Kumar experienced his coaching career’s most memorable moment.

“At Antwerp, Belgium, in 2015, our girls qualified for the Olympics after 36 years. That was my most memorable moment,” he said.

Kumar also guided the team to the silver medal at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang Asian Games but took time off to tend to his ailing father who eventually passed away in 2019. He returned to coaching, travelling to Oman where he guided Ahli-Sidab to a Sultan Cup triumph in February 2021.

Kumar’s coaching acumen was plain to see when he guided Indian Railways to runners-up in the 1996 and 1997 National championships in Bengaluru and Hyderabad respectively.

In time, his coaching duties covered age group, junior and senior teams, both men and women.

His recommendation of narrowing the gap between the methods at the domestic level and at the National camps is worth serious attention.

“The coaches of the top four teams at the National Championship would do well to attend India camps where they would experience scientific and technological support that goes with training first hand. They would then return to their state/ institutional teams to share those inputs, thereby facilitating the transition of players to the next level,” he suggests.

“Such an attachment at national camps could work wonders for developing players and teams, and I look forward to an initiation of such a policy by Sports Authority of India.”

His calm and composed demeanour suggests a philosophy worth subscribing to in the high-pressure environment of coaching.

His advice to budding coaches may go a long way as he says: “Work steadily towards your target without expecting anything in return. Your target will then fall in place.”

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