Times of India: Hockey India now wants to continue with coaches till Tokyo Olympics
Sabi Hussain
NEW DELHI: The swapping of men’s and women’s team coaches following the Gold Coast CWG debacle wasn’t a decision taken in haste and at least 43 current and former players – including past Olympians and veteran coaches – were consulted a length before Hockey India ringed in the changes, top HI sources told TOI on Saturday.
The sources revealed that the general feeling among the members, who were part of the week-long review meeting, was that the men’s team, coached by Sjoerd Marijne, played its worst-ever hockey in recent times and it looked as if the “Indian hockey had travelled 10 years back in time” in terms of playing standard.
Both the men’s and women’s teams finished an identical fourth in Gold Coast. However, it’s the shoddy performance of the men’s team, captained by Manpreet Singh, which hurt the HI brass the most.
In its rather bizarre decision, women’s team coach Harendra Singh was given the reins of the men’s team, while the men’s coach Marijne was attached to the women’s team, a position he had previously held. It’s been learnt that HI’s high-performance director David John brokered the peace deal.
However, sources divulged an interesting piece of news. HI would continue with this coaching arrangement until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics without making further changes in the coaching department, no matter what the situation is.
This decision has been made after eyebrows were raised in the Sports Authority of India (SAI) over HI’s much-criticised ‘hire-and-fire’ policy. But given HI’s tendency to react at the drop of a hat, a disastrous outing at the forthcoming Asian Games and World Cup at home could easily bring the jobs of Marijne and Harendra under the scanner.
To a question why HI did not appoint Harendra as men’s team coach when Roelant Oltmans was fired last year, the source added that HI felt that the junior World Cup-winning coach was not ready for the job at that time.