Sport - Hockey

A contrived solution meant to please all

CHENNAI: A contrived solution in a please-all tenor has been hammered out at the charade in Delhi over the failure to make it to the Beijing Olympics.

True, the best hockey brains were involved in the exercise to put Ric Charlesworth on a pedestal worthy of his stature, but the end product contains several loose ends. Whether such an arrangement will last, or is it the panacea, only time can tell.

Joaquim Carvalho’s somersault after the reverse against Great Britain at Santiago has dented his image.

His dilemma is inexplicable. First, he took the moral high ground — commendably, one thought — by resigning as the chief coach. He admitted that he felt let down by the players who, he reckoned, were below par on that fateful day.

Then he changed track, pointing the finger at the umpiring as the reason for the defeat. When rebuffed, rightly so, by the fraternity over the observations, Carvalho turned his ire on the tournament officials, saying that they were demoralising the players with stern warnings. He did not stop short of implying that there was a conspiracy to keep India out.

These explanations only underlined Carvalho’s confusion over what really caused India’s deplorable exit.

Probably, he did not anticipate the intensity and depth of disappointment that swept across the globe, and was convinced that searching for an alibi, however unconvincing, was the best remedy.

At the end of it all, the chief coach has managed to retain his post amidst speculation over his tenure. Somewhat surprisingly, he has agreed to work with Charlesworth when everyone still believes that he did not want the Aussie around in Santiago.

If Carvalho had not said it in so many words, at least one member of his support staff made it plain, stating that Charlesworth demoralised the team.

In this scenario, what sort of rapport Charlesworth can build up with the chief coach and his support staff is a big question. On the face of it, the compromise appears to satisfy at least a few, but irritants are bound to emerge.

Carvalho will be aware that the majority in the IHF is against him continuing in the job. But, the decision of the man who matters has bailed him out.

Interestingly, in a set-up where the coaches are shown the door and humiliated in any debacle — ask Baskaran, Cedric D’Souza and Rajinder Singh (Jr) — the official backing for the coach who has failed to deliver and devastated the psyche of the nation has been protected from public criticism even after he chose to step down.

Disgusting, however, is scheduling tours and tournaments as though nothing has happened. Even those who have qualified for the Olympics have not worked out the schedule as diligently as the IHF has done while planning for the four-nation tournament in Australia and the Azlan Shah tournament in May.

The players, quite understandably, are demoralised and frustrated after months of toil and training.

It is time the Sports Ministry took the initiative to assess whether such tournaments are a must for a discipline relegated from the priority category.

If the tours cannot be avoided because of prior commitment — failure to withdraw without adequate notice may attract a fine, or a reprimand from the FIH — the best the IHF can do is project the under-23 team, with a fair sprinkling of juniors, under A.K. Bansal, who has shown tangible results in recent months along with Charlesworth as the advisor.

Such a step will be more meaningful in building teams for the future than sending a set of worn-out players with a coaching squad that is under pressure to step down after the chilling verdict in Chile.

It is sad that even in these turbulent times, pragmatism and purposeful planning continue to be dwarfed by needless complexities.

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