Success has many fathers, and failure none. Cliched as that may sound, the performance of India’s junior hockey teams, boys and girls, at the FIH Junior World Cups has been desperately disappointing.
For the girls’ side to finish ninth was indeed a poor show, though the focus is now on the boys’ team, which followed up a 1-4 loss to Germany in the semi-finals with a 3-1 defeat against Spain in the bronze-medal game. For India to have wasted 13 penalty corners in the Germany match was little short of a crime
Even more lousy was the reasoning given by CR Kumar, the coach, who said man-to-man marking did India in. “If man-to-man marking was responsible for India’s doom, how did they earn 13 penalty corners?” thundered Jagbir Singh, former India captain.
For all those who watched the horror show live, beamed from Kuala Lumpur, India losing to Germany was illogical. Having made it to the semi-finals, the team had to keep two plans ready at least. These days, in modern hockey, penalty corner conversion is so important. If there is a set of four people identified for that job, how come there were no variations tried out by India?
“I mean, if you are going to show no variety in penalty corner conversion, it’s bizarre,” added Jagbir.
For the hockey-lovers at home celebrating the gold won by the men in the Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, which secured their passage to the Paris Olympics in 2024, the juniors doing badly is sad news. It is next to impossible to say that a few of these juniors would walk into the senior side after the Paris Olympics. That means that the bench strength is a real worry.
There are tongues wagging that there was no unity in the junior boys’ side. If that be the case, how come the coach and the individual from Belarus, para-trooped to handle the two junior sides, are keeping quiet? In August, Hockey India announced that Herman Kruis, former Dutch women’s hockey coach, would oversee the preparations of both sides.
“The next four months are exciting and at the same time an important phase in the teams’ preparations,” said Kruis in a statement in August. “I look forward to working with them to achieve the desirable results.” The FIH-certified coach-cum-educator is mum now. He is responsible for two teams flopping, and that’s not going to go down well with the establishment.
When India’s junior team won the World Cup in Lucknow in 2016, there was euphoria. Coach Harendra Singh was over the moon, though all the hard work had been done by Roelant Oltmans, the high-performance director. It was a different story that Oltmans was sacked after the 2016 Rio Olympics.
In 2021, when Bhubaneswar hosted the Junior World Cup, India finished fourth. The result was unpalatable, though excuses were regarding the Bio Bubble due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
This time, there is no pandemic and India have flopped again. Uttam Singh, the captain, is at a loss for words. Plenty of money has been pumped into Indian hockey by the government. They get the best facilities at the camps – good nutrition, supplements, scientific inputs and what not. If after all this, the results are not good and India do not come close to winning the World Cup, questions will be asked.
Ideally, there should be a high-performance director to plan and monitor the entire operation. Since that person does not exist, Kruis must be hauled over the coals. If a comparison is to be made, Craig Fulton spent hardly three months with the senior team and won the nation two big trophies, the Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai, and then the Asian Games.
There will be post-mortems, and attempts will be made to pass the buck. Who identified Kruis, and how much he has delivered must be probed by an independent committee set up by Hockey India. So many resources have gone down the drain and the government – Sports Authority of India (SAI) and the Sports Ministry – have a right to question Hockey India (HI) about what is going on. Each rupee spent is from the tax-payers’ money.
There is so much enthusiasm over hockey at present, and if junior sides do not do well, it reflects poorly on the grassroots-stage development as well. Unlike the old days, when players stayed in dank hotels and ate lousy food, today’s boys and girls get the best nutrition and professional inputs.
Has it become a bit like the case of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, where gruel was better?
Also Read: Spanish boys spank India to win bronze medal in FIH junior World Cup