The Kuala Lumpur Champion’s Trophy hockey tournament had many unexpected guests. They were from every continent, literally. They assembled here to rove new developments, new players, systems and strategies being employed in the elite hockey event.
However, no Indians connected with the present national teams, found it worthwhile to be here. And it does not augur well for India whose national game needs all sorts of inputs to come out of the mould into which it has cast itself.
Apart from the elite eight participating teams, the Chinese and Canadian men teams flew down to Kuala Lumpur a week before the tournament started. They benefited a lot by getting enough opportunity to play practice matches with the other participating teams. Thereafter they had been constant in the stadium to observe and analyse the things.
There was also a peculiar East Asian Rush, with coaches from Singapore, Thailand, Macau, Japan, Hong Kong and Vietnam being here with videos and charts. Not to speak of women’s national team coaches of New Zealand and China!
Surprisingly a hockey team from Royal Academy, Colombo along with their coach too was present with their note books writing down partly the observation task given by the coach during the tournament. These hockey players’ parents had to shell out money to send them all the way to here, in order to witness the elite teams in action. Interestingly enough, these players had also come to see the Chennai 2005 Champions Trophy!
The coaching group and video analysts with all kind of available software’s were seen recording, analyzing and discussing about each match and the strategies employed by different teams especially during the penalty corner attack, defense, outside circle free hits, strategy in attack, penetration, turnovers, etc. Most of the participating teams had at least half a dozen of support staff to capture and analyze data.
Indians team officials may come out with the cliché ‘We saw the matches on TV telecast’. Dear sir, this is, even if we assume they have done so, is not quiet enough to really analyze the strategy and pattern of attack For, television shows only close shots of players movements. For more effective analyses the movement of the players could be better observed and captured throughout the length and breadth of the hockey field with a single camera from behind the goals posts.
There was a hype in the Indian media about Technical Director for the Senior Men’s team Somaya’s ‘Spy Mission’ and all that. He was not to be seen anywhere in the stadium. This writer learnt that his passport expired and could not be renewed on time! It speaks how casual we are and also why not an alternative if Somaya could not go.
The known Indians to be seen in the stadium were umpire Satinder Sharma, former Junior/Senior National coach Harendra Singh, former Thailand and Singapore coach P. Raphael and well-known Indian coach cum trainer Dr. Saju Joseph, besides a couple of Indian journalists, who continue to chake de and strive to boost the morale of Indian hockey. Needless to mention they all came here on their own expenses, and to be in sync with the ever-dynamic world of hockey.
Tournaments of such nature are great boon to roving coaches. Missing this meant they lose sight of latest developments and trends insofar as strategy and tactics being constantly innovated by various teams. It will certainly tell in our preparations for the Olympic Qualifiers and the Olympics. More so, when Chile rivals England were here, showing improvement match after match.
Our coaching staff live in their own world and if such attitude continues, the day will not be far we are condemned to live lonely once for all.
One silver lining in the whole issue is presence of Ric Charlesworth as television commentator. But the moot point is will our coaches avail his advice? Or, the proverbial Indian ego will come in the way?