My last word: The Ministry too is to be blamed for the hockey impasse
The new man in the hot seat of Sports Ministry seems to have caught into the cleft stick of others making.
Ajay Maken, a political bigwig in Delhi, replaced strong and impact making MS Gill as the Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports about a month ago.
At an event to mark his first month in office, Ajay Maken announced starting of the national training camp on 9th March. In a labourious reply to my question in the press conference, he gave an indication that both coaches and the list of probables will be in place before the scheduled start of the camp in national stadium, which incidentally falls in his constituency.
He even went on to suggest that he had announced a deadline and that things will fall in line, ‘otherwise I would not have set a deadline’.
But alas, things have not fell in line, but went astray. Suffice to say the camp has not started, neither did the announcement of coaches come out.
It seems the problems of hockey are too big for solution than what the Ministry may have thought it to be so.
If the hockey is in a mess today what with both Hockey India and Indian Hockey Federation not ready to move even an inch on their stated position, the origin for it might look internal politics of warring factions, but it is not just that alone.
Race for the hockey seat between the surrogate HI and the out-lived IHF has been going on last two years. Still, hockey was going on without any break, not even a single camp was deferred, every international engagement has been honoured.
The coaching staff were in place, in fact there was surfeit of staff in place. Players had a luxury of stay and travel, which are very important.
There was no surprise in all these because as we all know the cost of running the camp, infrastructure and salaries to the coaches were borne by the sports Ministry, not by the loud-mouthed HI or IHF.
The above is a fact, then why all of a sudden we have problem in running camp. Because we don’t have coaches. Now look at the reason why we don’t have a national chief coach.
Because, please introspect yourself Ministry, who shunted out the national chief coach?
Was it Indian Hockey Federation, was it Hockey India, who?
It is some officials with a convenient assistance from Hockey India who failed Jose Brasa. His contract has not been renewed.
The ministry punished a coach for improving three positions each in World Cup and Asia Cup — and rewarded him with boot for winning all four Pakistan encounters in 2010.
Narinder Batra’s antipathy towards Jose Brasa was lapped up by somebody in the SAI or Ministry; two groups combined well to send Brasa out, despite his overtures.
We can well understand the dislike of Batras — who are there in the public domain to showman themselves.
What about the arms of government, which need to have a policy and supposed to have vision, a long term one at that.
How can a responsible government or its departments dispense away with the services of a national coach without having a replacement in place?
Now if the government remains weak in the subject in question, is it not of its own making?
Ideally, the ministry should not have found in Batra a convenient bedfellow to remove Jose Brasa and then now unable to convince him of consensus choice, and then even try to portray HI and IHF as villains of the piece, though they are.
Had Brasa been continued, he could have watched the National Games and could have come out with good understanding of our talent pool, too.
The sports Ministry which is doing yeoman service to sports at large by bringing out the historic Sports Legislation Bill, needs to resist short-term steps like side-stepping the genuine coach Jose Brasa.
Time is still there for the Ministry to make the correction — it can right now recall Brasa which will infuse continuity, the ministry can come out of the situation gracefully and meaningfully.
Brasa can always give the list of probables which government nominees won’t disagree. Thus, the ministry can easily get two fruits in one stone!
HI and IHF will never amenable to reason, will never agree on anything — least of all coaches and players — unless cornered or pressured into.