Disappointing show, says coach

By M.C. Raman

CHENNAI, SEPT. 26. National men's coach Shyam Sundar Rao has submitted his report to the Volleyball Federation of India (VFI) on return from Changwan (South Korea), where India finished seventh in the Asian men's championship. In fact, India had improved its position, moving from ninth to seventh slot. But the coach is disappointed again for various reasons.

The VFI officials, however, are thoroughly satisfied with the performance in the World championship qualifier held in China and the Asian championship. ``We are satisfied. Our only regret is that the team failed to qualify by a slender margin. It would have been a big boost to us as the sport would have gained the priority status and we could have planned to expose the team in some more important tournaments abroad,'' said Mr. K. Murugan, Secretary, VFI.

``I discussed with the SAI official, Mr. M.P. Ganesh, in Delhi and he understood our problems. The VFI will continue to strive hard to qualify for the World championship. We will not give up. Foreign coaches are asking me why a player like Tom Joseph is not playing in Europe. So we are now working out a plan to help our leading players to go to Europe. We have to change this Gulf obsession. It does not help us much,'' Mr. Murugan said.

``Look at the irony. Kazakhstan qualified for the World championship, but India failed. In the Asian championship India finished seventh but Kazakhstan went down to 10th position. We have to take these things in our stride and work hard,'' said the VFI official.

In the last four months, Shyam, who in the mid 90s enabled the Indian junior team to qualify for the World championship with fantastic victories over China and Japan, faced the most challenging job of helping the Indian senior squad qualify for the 2002 World championship and putting up a good show in the Asian championship.

Shyam came back after a break of about three years. He had a short period before assembling the team for the Dubai invitation tournament, which is a regular `strength' testing venue for India. In that championship he realised that the raw juniors were not good enough to take on strong outfits like China, Japan, Iran, Qatar, Australia and Saudi Arabia. He did a smart thing by roping in the experienced setter Ravikanth Reddy, Amir Singh and centre blocker Rajesh on condition that they would be focused on their job, dumping their internal bickerings.

The Indian trainer, taking India's lack of match practice abroad, did his calculations well and wanted his team to set its sight on the best loser slot for the World championship. ``We beat Chinese-Taipei and Qatar, but lost to Japan. Where we went wrong was in the match against Qatar which we should have won in three straight sets. But we conceded one set and that finally shattered the dream of figuring in the World championship,'' said the National coach.

``Amir's injury affected the attack to some extent. But I have no complaints against our spiking. Tom Joseph and Joby Joseph did well. But our block was shabby. Neither Rajesh nor Subba Rao could rise to the occasion. Even libero Aman, who played well in the World qualifier, put up a poor show in the Asian championship. We have to improve our defence considerably, exposing our players to stronger competitions in Europe. This local stuff won't do'' said Shyam.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Sport
Previous : Stoeckler sends Somdev packing