The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : It's time for IHF to address chief coach issue

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Thursday, Jan 19, 2006

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It's time for IHF to address chief coach issue

S. Thyagarajan

Chennai: Clueless and caught in a dilemma, the Indian Hockey Federation seems haunted again by the issue of National coach.

Said to be miffed by factors, which remain inexplicable, chief coach Rajinder Singh (Jr.) is out of the ambit of the on-going Premier League in Chandigarh. Speculation as to whether the coach has put in his papers, as a consequence of stinging media criticism over handling (mishandling?) the team in the Champions Trophy, or has gone in to a voluntary exile from the scene of action is unclear.

Consciously playing out the whole episode in a low octave, the federation is simply allowing everything to drift and accentuating expectations of an impending change. Sources indicate that Rajinder is out as a result of a domestic problem that needs to be sorted out.

Pointers like Vasudevan Baskaran and Harendra Singh taking lessons for the players, in the breather between the set of matches in the PHL, are being interpreted as indicating that Rajinder is out of the scene.

Review

That there is a consensus among those who care for Indian hockey over the need to review the continuance of Rajinder as coach goes without saying.

It may be true that the coach cannot be guillotined every time when the team sinks in a competition. But Rajinder's appointment has raised many eyebrows from the start, after the end of that horrific chapter involving the German coach, Gerhard Rach.

His record, be it in Azlan Shah, Rabobank or the Champions Trophy, is nothing to be hailed. To be fair, he was sincere to the job and did whatever he could muster. But such inputs — palpably laboured, conventional and lacking in ingenuity — can make no impact in contemporary hockey, where every encounter needs to be planned and programmed imaginatively.

With the inexplicable reluctance to hire a foreign coach of the calibre of Ric Charlesworth, or anyone willing to take up the challenge, the IHF perforce has to fish around for a few who would go miles to get into the shoes as a the chief coach.

There is as yet no confirmation whether it will be Baskaran, the captain of the Olympic gold-winning team at Moscow in 1980. If eventually he takes back the onerous task, after all his previous efforts ended with a humiliation of a sacking, it will undoubtedly a very challenging and stressful one, given the circumstances.

Been there before

Baskaran has had more than one stint as a coach — the 1998 World Cup in Utrecht and the Sydney Olympics in 2000. If only he had been fortunate enough to see that India had not shared points with Poland when only a minute and 40 seconds were left for the hooter, he not only would have ensured the team an Olympic semifinal berth buts also his continuance for some years. But that was not destined.

Then came Rajinder Singh (Sr.) with an outstanding year in 2003, winning the four-nation at Hamburg and the Asia Cup at Kuala Lumpur, but was sacrificed before the Athens Games in preference to Rach.

It is disheartening to witness this charade of coaches emerging and exiting as a matter of routine. With only a month left for the high profile India-Pakistan Test series, there is a definite note of urgency for the hockey administration to effect a change, if it is contemplating that, or clear the air over the uncertainty surfacing because of the absence of Rajinder Singh (Jr.) at Chandigarh.

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