The Indian Women’s Hockey Federation has appointed Dutchman Herman Kruis as the coach of the senior national team.
On Thursday, Kruis joined the women’s team, currently undergoing a training camp at Lucknow in preparation for the 6th Women’s Asia Cup in Hong Kong from September 1 to 9. This appointment, however, is on a temporary basis.
Kruis is the executive director of the Johan Cruyff College for high performance sportspersons in Amsterdam. He has also been the coach of Dutch women’s club Hertogenbosch since 2000. Hertogenbosch have been seven-time consecutive national champions in the Netherlands and also seven-time consecutive European club champions. Kruis also coached the Dutch indoor team to the FIH Indoor World Cup title in Vienna this year, according to a release from the IWHF.
Kruis replaces long-time coach MK Kaushik for the Asia Cup. Kaushik was named the coach when the women toured Japan last month, but he couldn’t make the trip due to family problems, according to IWHF officials.
Prior to the Japan tour, when the women underwent a training camp at the Sports Authority of India Southern Centre on the outskirts of the city, Kaushik was unable to make it for most of the duration of the camp. The reason was that he was not given permission by the Haryana Government, where he is employed as the deputy director of sports. Subsqeuently, he got permission and attended the Bangalore camp for about two weeks.
Meanwhile, the Indian women’s developmental team are touring Bra (Italy) for a three-nation tournament in preparation for the Asia Cup and Olympic qualifying tournament, for which GS Bangu was named coach.