Times of India: Swap deal: Hockey India springs fresh surprise

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Times of India: Swap deal: Hockey India springs fresh surprise

Manuja Veerappa

BENGALURU: The Indian hockey musical chair continues. In a predictable move, Hockey India on Wednesday announced the swapping of coaches for the senior national men and women’s teams. In starker terms, underfire men’s team coach Sjoerd Marijne has been sacked and replaced by his women’s team counterpart Harendra Singh. The Dutchman, who became the seventh foreign coach to exit the men’s team in 14 years, has been reappointed as the women’s team chief coach, a post he held until he was roped in following the sacking of Roelant Oltmans in September last year.

Following the team’s below-par fourth-place finish at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games the Hockey India corridors were abuzz with news of the imminent change. There were talks of Marijne, who is currently awaiting his visa to return from the Netherlands, being shown the door. While Harendra was always the frontrunner for the post, CR Kumar’s name was being discussed for the post of women’s coach. But with the women’s team familiar with Marijne, Hockey India high performance director David John got the Dutchman to agree to the interchange.

According to sources, it was initially discussed that the move would be a stop-gap arrangement until the World Cup later this year, but John confirmed to TOI that both contracts would run until the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But the question is, given Hockey India’s tendency and reputation of hiring and firing coaches, will both the coaches serve out their contract?

Interestingly, when Oltmans was sacked, Harendra’s was among the top picks as a replacement but they chose Marijne, who did not have prior experience in handling a senior national men’s team. Given Harendra’s experience and comfort level with most players, HI should have hired him last year.

Players unhappy with Marijne

Last week former Hockey India chief and current Indian Olympic Association president Narinder Batra held talks with senior members of the team to elicit their views and reasons for India’s poor showing in Gold Coast, their worst in three Games. Most of them expressed their reservations about the coaching style and team selection.

Defending his tactics and the players’ involvement in it, Marijne, in a social media post on Tuesday, said, “The coaching style I chose was player-driven. The reason being that players learn to take responsibility for their actions. All decisions which were taken involved (the players) and that means they were supporting the plan. The other reason is that when you involve players in the thinking process they will get more tactical awareness and learn faster. This is scientifically proven because they have to learn to take decisions on the pitch. It means I prepare for the matches and after this I share it with the leaders so they can explain in Hindi to the rest of the team.”

Said John: “The men’s team did not perform to expectations at the CWG. We wanted to play in the gold medal match so, placing fourth was not going forward. We have three big tournaments coming up this year and we want to make sure the team moved forward. We felt at this stage Harendra can motivate the senior men. There are nine junior players in the team and he knows most of them.”

According to John, Marijne has reconciled to the situation.

Short-changing the women’s team

What is baffling about the change of guard is that Hockey India seems to have forgotten the importance of the women’s team. Apparently, the thought is that a coach not good enough for the men’s team is worthy of coaching the women’s team. With the women’s team having progressed well, the latest move may impact them.