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The Rediff Hockey Interview / Vasudevan Bhaskaran

"I'll tell you what actually happened..."

Vasudevan Bhaskaran was the captain of the Indian hockey team which won the Gold medal in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Last year, he added one more feather to his cap by bringing success to the Indian junior hockey team -- and this in turn led to his promotion as coach of the senior side.

The results, however, were disastrous. India finished ninth in the World Cup in Utrecht, and it was predictably Bhaskaran's head which rolled.

Bhaskaran, though, says he was never axed -- according to him, he refused to coach the same team about which he had written some very critical observations in his post-tournament report.

The supposedly confidential report submitted to the Indian Hockey Federation however appeared in all the newspapers, thanks to the customary leak, and put Bhaskaran in a very tenuous position.

Bhaskaran, however, seems neither angry, nor disturbed, by the furore. In fact, he was preparing to add another string to his professional bow, when he goes to Kuala Lumpur, for the Commonwealth Games, as journalist and commentator.

Excerpts, of an interview with Shobha Warrier:

A team loses, and the coach gets the axe. Is this a global rule of sport?

No, you don't see that happen in other parts of the world, it happens mostly in India, in Indian hockey especially. Maybe it is because hockey is our national game, the powers that be feel that the coach is the only person who can be blamed for any disaster.

I'll tell you what actually happened. I had given a very honest and truthful report on the performance of the entire team, to the Federation -- and mind you, it was very confidential. Then when I met both K P S Gill and Jyothikumaran in Madras during the coaching camp, they told me I could continue coaching the same team.

I felt it was not correct on my part to coach the same team after having given the report, and after having seen the boys perform in the last three years. Yes, I have a lot of regard for the senior players like Pillai, Mukesh, Sabu Varkey, etc, but I felt their performance was not up to standard, especially when you consider their own abilities.

Fortunately or unfortunately, in the World Cup our schedule had us playing Holland and Germany on consecutive days, and that too was one of the reasons we didn't do too well.

But reverting to the question you asked me, I genuinely believe that changing coaches frequently will affect the continuity of the team.

I remember you telling me, over a year ago, that you had a lot of freedom when coaching the junior side, and that this had helped you get results. Was it different with the senior squad?

No, I did get a lot of freedom, actually. The only difference was the personal problems between the players and the Federation.

What kind of personal problems?

Problems regarding the match fee, they wanted the IHF to increase it, but I would say that the federation had done a good job, they gave the players a good amount, I certainly don't remember getting anything close to that during my own playing days. So I believe that the players too had a responsibility to give something back to the country and the federation. That sense of responsibility was missing.

When did you realise that the spark was missing?

Let me put it this way -- when your mind is concentrated on your payment and not on the game, I don't think you will perform well, however good you are.

Did you tell them about this, get them to shift their focus back on the game?

It was not my job. The federation had done some counselling with them, and had given some money too. The IHF also decided that whether a player played a tournament or not, he should get about Rs 100,000, something like that, as long as he continued to play for the team. So, to start with, there was money. But the players thought it was not enough. For my part, I thought they should have taken what was given, played well, put on a good performance and then asked for more.

Your 'confidential' report appeared all over the media, so who leaked it? The IHF?

No, it was not the federation. I came to know that a copy of the report was given to all the selectors, as some new selectors had come in. One of them, for his own reasons, must have leaked it.

See, it is like the progress report of a child. The teacher writes his comments in the report. If a child does not perform well, the teacher has every right to say, 'must perform well', 'not up to the mark', etc. etc. The same way, like a teacher, I had given an honest report on the players. But when those comments are splashed on the front pages of newspapers, it changes the equation between me and the players...

You said that no one is indispensable...

Yes, it is absurd to think that there are no replacements, I genuinely believe no player is indispensable.

Of course, you won't get readymade players, like you don't have readymade IAS officers. But would you permit, say, a chief secretary to continue in his post for ten years on the grounds that you don't have anyone else for that position? Of course not. That is because you have an exam, those who get good marks join the IAS, then they are trained, slotted into various jobs, brought up through the ranks... the same thing should happen with hockey. Look at the Pakistan team for instance -- it is almost entirely brand new, how did they find replacements?

In the 51 probables selected now, there are guys who played in the eighties and early nineties...

The basic argument I would put forward is, you can have older players, providing they are fit to play. If you don't play well and, equally important, if you don't fit into the coach's theoretical and practical system, you are lost. We normally tend to do the post mortem on the same player ten times!

If you take the Holland team or Spainish or German teams, the coaches are there for ten years. The German coach told me that he looks after everything.

Here in India, how much freedom does a coach have?

It is not a question of freedom. It is a question of policy. If I am given an athlete, I need at least five years to coach him or her. The Pakistan team which came to India two years back for Champions Trophy finished sixth, now they have done a wonderful job in the World Cup. It took two and a half years for them to produce the results.

Or take Spain. We beat them 2-0 in 1995, in the 6-Nation Tournament. Within one year, the same team performed very well in the Atlanta Olympics, and they continued to occupy the number two position in the world. They have the same team, the same coach, even now.

We have a lot of naturally talented hockey players. You only have to correct them continuously, and for that, your coach has to be reasonably long term. Now we talk of getting a foreign coach, and I can tell you it will be a disaster.

Why? Because, are you going to give ten years to a foreign coach? How can you justify doing that when you haven't given that tenure to an Indian coach? From 1964 onwards, I can say that our coaches were given only one, or one and a half years, time.

Your predecessor, Cedric D'Souza, was also talking of continuity of coaching, a few days back, didn't you guys ever try to make the federation understand the need for this?

The federation knows it very well. I too was a stop-gap coach, it was a haphazard thing and when you do things in a haphazard way, you get only haphazard results.

In your tenure, do you think the rapport that is needed between coach and players was missing?

No, the rapport was there. I am talking about the performance. If you persist with a player who has not done well, the result will be bad.

Doesn't the coach have a say in team selection, then?

Let me tell you something -- the problem in India is, the Press will criticise if the federation drops a senior player. Even if the player doesn't do well, the press will still criticise his omission. And this puts pressure on everyone.

Why should the federation be bothered about what the press says?

A: Why? You tell me? Why should I be scared of journalists if I have done my job honestly? Criticisms of all kinds will always be there. They shouldn't be unduly bothered about criticism -- but they don't realise that.

You said earlier the seniors were not focussed -- how was it, with the junior team?

The juniors were more concerned about the game, more disciplined, and they concentrated well. The seniors play a higher level of hockey, so they need mental rest more. Unfortunately, they don't have that.

Also, at the higher level, I feel even in their sleep, they should be thinking about hockey. Instead, they were thinking about money. The concentration level of the (senior) players drops badly when they are mentally off. I have been observing this for a long time, even before I became a coach.

In your report, you had written that in the opening game against Germany, the team did not regroup after playing bad hockey in the first fifteen minutes...

Regroup, in the sense.... See, I cannot go inside the ground and tell them anything. So, I expected a regrouping at the captain's level. There was a lot of time-outs, and the captain could have called all the ten players, talked to them and instilled confidence in them so that they wouldn't continue to play badly, but this was missing in our team.

You had also criticised the captain for not boosting the morale of the team. Was the captain also not focussed?

Even if he is not playing well himself, the captain has the responsibility to boost the morale of the team members. This was not happening.

Did you talk to the captain about this?

Yes, of course. We always talk before the game. I used to also talk to Mr Gill about the form of the players, as I knew the boys, their mind and their problems well. In fact, I have not even claimed the telephone bills for the calls I made to Gill and others. I only wanted the boys to be happy. Nobody can excel in anything unless he is happy and satisfied.

What was the problem with the captain?

There was no problem as such. He had no problem with the other players too. The only problem he had was that he was not playing well, that's all.

He was dispirited and he passed this on to the other players too...?

Why should he pass his feelings to others? When others see that the captain is not playing well, they should try to a play better. It is not that they also should play badly. The players also could support him and help him get out of the problem. But it was not there in the team, because there was no regrouping at any level. Something was lacking, maybe because they lost the first two games.

There were a lot of problems in many teams previously too, but they have won. This was a tournament we could have played well and won. Unfortunately, as a coach, I was not given enough time.

About Anil Aldrin, you wrote in the report that he would have played better if he was physically fit.

He was exhausted because he was recalled after a gap of one and a half years.

Sabu Varkey was also not physically fit. Why was it that you had so many unfit players in the team?

It is the prerogative of the selectors and the federation to select a player. That is why I have suggested that in future, the pattern of selection should change.

But as coach, couldn't you have omitted the unfit ones? Didn't you have a say in the matter?

It is not a question of having 'a say' in the matter. I cannot omit them, as they had already been selected, that is not done. And though I have a say, I can't sack five players! Whenever I gave my view on the selection of the players, it was not accepted fully.

Granting you were stuck with unfit players, couldn't you drop them, say, for a match, a crucial one?

If I omit one player, immediately the journalists pounce on me asking, why did you omit him? It is not that I am hiding something. 25 journalists came from India for the World Cup. Why didn't a single person write that there were unfit players in the team? Do they not know hockey? They write as if they do not know hockey.

Your argument is that the journalists covering the game don't know hockey?

Maybe. See, when they see a limping man, why didn't they ask the coach and the federation why he was in the side? If they had guts, they would have written about it then. The problem was, they had written earlier that these players were good, so then, when the journalists saw those players struggling, they didn't have the guts to backtrack, to admit they were wrong. All these questions are coming up now because I wrote about the fitness of the players in the report. If during the tournament, the press had written honest reports, the public would have known the truth, what exactly happened there.

Before the tournament, did you tell the federation that those players were physically unfit?

Why should I tell them? They know it, they had seen it for themselves.

But as coach you would want fit players in your team...

Yes, But it is not done that way in India. Take any game, and telll me which coach has full rights? Who selects the sixteen? The selectors. If I were given the power to choose the team, I would not have taken this team at all. But I had no choice.

That is why I am insisting that the policies have to be changed. I wrote such an open report because I thought it would help the future of the game. Even after giving the report, they were prepared to have me continue, but I refused because I didn't want to go through the same problems again. I didn't want to cheat the country and the people. I didn't want to continue with the same people. It was reported in the papers that I was axed. That was not true. The press should have asked me before filing the report.

So who is responsible for this state of affairs? The federation?

No, not the federation but the players themselves.

But it is the federation that selected unfit players...

Having been selected, it was then up to the players to do the best they could. There were some very good German players for instance who were only sixty or seventy per cent fit. But they worked extra hard to overcome that.

When I last met you, after your success with the junior team, you said you wanted a promotion. Now, do you regret it?

No I don't, why should I when I have done my duty honestly?

After your experience, do you feel the coach's job is a thankless one?

I don't think so. It all depends on how one takes it, you should not take everything to heart. One thing I must tell you, a coach, whoever it is, should be given at least eight years with a team. There should be a panel of coaches, and the pattern followed by the chief coach for the seniors should also be followed by the other coaches, of the Under-16 and Under-14 sides as well. This way, as a player moves up the ranks, there will be continuity of thought, of tactics and skills. You should also take the Under-16 and Under-14 players to Europe and make them play as many tournaments as possible.

You think the youngsters today are not sufficiently exposed to to international tournaments?

Yes. If they are exposed at a very young level itself, the fear of the big occasion will go. They should feel free to sit in a coffee-house with a foreign team, and talk to them. I had told the federation about the importance of our players mingling with players from the other countries.

At eleven o'clock, an Indian player comes to the restaurant of a five-star hotel and sees the German team or the Australian team sitting at a table, he will not join them. The first thought that comes to his mind would be, ten marks for the coffee. His next thought would be, how would I converse with them?

The day our players comfortably sit with the other teams in a coffee bar, they will start performing well against them, too.

Lack of confidence, is that what you are talking about?

Yes, absolutely. If a player starts moving with players from other countries from a very young age, he will feel confident about facing them on the playground as well. When I went abroad with the juniors, I made them follow these things, I asked them to write their own diaries, record their experiences, share them with us, I instructed them to talk in English. I told them, the Spanish player may not talk in English, but you should talk to him confidently in the English that you know.

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