Indian hockey team in Azlan Shah sans doctor!

Satya Rath, TNN

MUMBAI: When Jose Brasa took charge of the Indian hockey team in May 2009, one of the first things he did was to scout for a doctor who could be with the team full time.

He zeroed in on Bibhu Kalyan Nayak of the Army Sports Institute – who besides being a medical professional is also an expert in sports physiology – to help improve the players’ fitness.

The results showed. Frequent breakdowns reduced drastically, the recovery time was faster, the overall fitness of the players improved.

Brasa was unceremoniously dumped as coach after last December’s Guangzhou Asian Games, but he did leave behind something which not many coaches had managed before: an injury-free squad.

How things can change in a matter of three-four months! Three key players – strikers Rajpal Singh and Tushar Khandekar, and midfielder Bharat Chikara – are nursing injuries and had to be excluded from the squad for the Azlan Shah tournament.

There are also murmurs on the fitness of a few other players, who are currently in Malaysia for the Azlan Shah event. What’s strange is that there is no doctor with the team this time to nurse the players back to peak fitness.

While most of the support staff of Brasa’s regime have been retained for the Azlan Shah campaign, one name’s missing from the list – that of Nayak. And for a change, neither Hockey India, nor the sports ministry, can be blamed for his omission.