OH GOD, not again. What is it about India’s hockey administrators that they can’t keep their tongues in check? Indian hockey sadly has an affliction and its administrators a foot in mouth disease. Now isn’t that a dreadful combination. The four nation international hockey tournament in Chandigarh – the Punjab Gold Cup – has seen our hockey players play out of their skins and in their quest to attain the summit, they have once again attempted like Sisyphus to start the trek upwards. But Indian hockey is peculiar, somehow or the other we just can’t seem to get it right. And like crabs we begin pulling them down.
Joaquim Cravalho had to go after the Chile Olympic qualifier debacle. Then we had Aslam Sher Khan appointed chief selector in the new ad hoc committee. Last August, he was dispensed with and Ajit Pal Singh appointed chief selector in his place. With the ad hoc committee trying to rope in a foreign coach Jose Manuel Brasa, things were looking better. Till Aslam Sher Khan and Ajit Pal Singh, two players with an exemplary record for India decided to bung in a monkey wrench. Swadeshi raised its ugly head when dissension surfaced between the members of the ad hoc committee which superseded the KPS Gill run IHF. Mohd Aslam Khan, convenor of the committee first threatened to quit, Randhir Singh, IOA secretary general actually quit and now an upset Sher Khan is busy commenting to all and sundry over senior players in the side as also their coach Harendra Singh. Smarting over being replaced by Ajit Pal, he is also raising Cain on the induction of a foreign coach in no uncertain terms.
Are Indian coaches better? I am not doubting their playing skills or their technical knowledge, but sport has acquired a new hue and dimension over the years. Fitness, contemporary drills, strategy and tactics are the fulcrum around which modern sport is played. Look at our cricketers. Didn’t we say that Indian coaches are better and resisted change there as well? Yes, of course, but soon there was no alternative but to bring in a looking glass for our players. John Wright gave way to the maverick, media mad Greg Chappell who in turn has been replaced by the unobtrusive Gary Kirsten. One cannot have a paisan-paisan approach. One has to bring in new thinking into the game. And the team is the better for it.
Randhir Singh while resigning was clear that the committee was pulling in different directions. What is it about hockey and its administration that it is always caught in a maelstrom. Why do we have control freaks running the show? I remember the dark days of Raghunandan Prasad clearly in my mind’s eye. Then we had the even darker, danker KPS Gill dispensation. No transparency, no clarity of thought, run like a private fiefdom. Complete and unparalleled power they say corrupts. In hockey’s case it is so true. And if things couldn’t get worse, we had the abominable Jyothikumaran epiode.
Now, another Gill, this time the sports minister MS Gill has joined issue. Threatening the selection committee, he told them off by saying, “Please concentrate with full integrity on your job, of making the best selection for India, and pass your recommendations to the President of the Ad-hoc Committee Shri Kalmadi, who should, as in cricket, inform India.” Nature they say abhors a vacuum. In hockey, more so. Now we have Gill cracking down on the turbulence between selector Aslam Sher Khan and national side coach in-charge Harender Singh over the performance of senior players.
Strangely, the selection committee and the ad-hoc committee have been at loggerheads over several issues since they took charge ten months ago following the supersession of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) by the Indian Olympic Association. The bottom line is that Indian coaches have come and gone, so has Ric Charlesworth who was given a torrid time by the IHF, hence the time has come to experiment with a full time foreign coach. A man who should be empowered to clean the augean stables, usher in a change in the mindset of the players and the way Indian hockey is played and administered. Let us not plumb new depths, MS Gill got his way with India cancelling its cricket tour of Pakistan, let us give him a chance to spring clean Indian hockey.
The question is will Suresh Kalmadi, Aslam Sher Khan, Ajit Pal Singh and others allow it to prosper.
