17 years ago around same time, 6-footer Bernhard Peters resurrected a forgotten player — who was taller than him — Florian Kunz to get Germany its first hockey World Cup. The Krefeld’s coach had with him Manhnhaim’s Markus Weiss as his deputy in Kuala Lumpur.

Later, Weiss, as chief coach of Germany, went on to fetch a rare ‘Grand double’ of men and women’s Olympic gold for his country.

These two celebrated coaches shortly later moved to football, getting plum posts against their coaching prowess proved superbly on hockey fields.

Peters and Weiss shunned hockey calls and assignments before making their professional switch.

Indian coach Harendra, let down by his players at Jakarta, is heralding to become an Indian Peters or Weiss.

India’s home grown elite coach Harendra is moving to football, and is planning to seek a professional career there. As a beginner, he will apply for start up level coaching course.

www.stick2hockey.com wishes him all the best in his chosen field.

Its no secret that Harendra’s heart lies with hockey, a sport for which he had unflinching loyalty that spanned four decades, dividing equally as player of proven calibre and then as successful Indian coach.

Starting from late 90s, he has been with coaching till Hockey India gave him recent option to revert back to junior coaching which he rightfully did not accept.

Sports Authority of India could have made plans to acquire his services but such niceties do not happen in our land. As a pro, he would hardly settle for charity coaching anymore.

Having trained both men and women, juniors, development squads and national teams, Harendra possess unrivalled experience.

Therefore, his option now is loss of hockey. Its for sure.

Will it be the gain of football? Only time will tell. But his ability to learn, improvise, willingness to work hard– aspects that we all have seen in the last two decades — give us confidence that he will excell in football too.

The mere fact that he wishes to continue coaching albeit different sport, vouchsafe for his passion.

This in itself is against the grain of Indian hockey coaches who had the opportunity to train national teams. Once out of national scene they reverted back to routine jobs but never thought of coaching another sport.

Harendra’s move thereore is pathbreaking.

This writer firmly belives that Harendra should have been continued with women’s where his services would have brought wonders. Accepting men’s domain barey couple of months before Asian Games and World Cup is a tough call, risky and its how it turned out thereafter.