Coaching the coaches

Since the turn of the century, India has been making a conscious effort to enhance its sporting credentials. From hoping to win at least one medal of any hue at the Olympics — excluding the eight gold medals in hockey, 7th of which came way back in 1964 — to now aspiring to strike multiple medals, the country has certainly taken encouraging strides forward. From having just one or two star athletes in the contingent to healthy spread of world-class talent across disciplines like shooting, wrestling, badminton, boxing and athletics in recent years, the sports culture in the country has made drastic progress this millennium. All of this is a culmination of the work and vision put in by Sports Authority of India and the athletes making the most of the improved opportunities. Not to mention several private players who have contributed to the growth.

While a lot of effort has gone into improving the quality of sporting infrastructure and athletes, the same cannot be said about the Indian coaches. Barring an odd one here and there, the average quality of coaches in the country has remained modest. There are many who are good at unearthing and molding talents from grassroot level, but those who graduate to elite status are very few. Majority of them ends up stagnating at basic level. The proof is in the pudding: most top Indian athletes prefer or work with foreign coaches.

Rio Olympics silver medallist and reigning world champion PV Sindhu now works exclusively with Park Tae Sang; Pavel Smirnov has been associated with shooting for a long while now; Graham Reid and Sjoerd Maijne are the head coaches of the men’s and women’s hockey teams respectively; five foreigners are employed in athletics, boxing has two, football has one… the list can go on. And this is only head coaches. Add physiotherapists, scientific advisers, masseurs etc and the amount of foreigners involved in shaping the fortunes of Indian sports is massive.

So why have the majority of Indian coaches not grown to international standards? Why are foreign coaches preferred at job interviews? Why do some Indian athletes, as they climb up the ladder of success, seek guidance from imports to perfect their craft? Why do many former players avoid getting into serious coaching and instead opt for the safety of desk jobs or run private academies? The answer to most of these question is simple: India simply hasn’t invested much in harnessing coaches as much as athletes.

“We simply haven’t done much in improving the coaching standards in the country,” former India hockey captain and one of the finest players of his era Jude Felix told DHoS. “Since I’m a former hockey player and was involved in coaching both the junior and senior teams not too long ago, I can tell you that there is a dearth of high quality coaches in the country. Reid is light years ahead in terms of strategy, analytics, player management etc as compared to Indian coaches. When there’s a job interview, Indians will be outshone by the foreigners. Our resumes are simply no match to theirs and I’m talking about hockey.”

Another immensely respected coach who has created champion players from nothing concurred with Felix. “Jude is right, we simply don’t have a robust system for grooming coaches in the country,” he emphasised. “For many years, I’ve been telling people concerned to invest in improving the quality of Indian coaches. Take China for example, they now only have homebred coaches in nearly every discipline at the top level. It took them many years but now they are totally self-sufficient. Not just coaching but in every aspect like strength and conditioning, sports science, sports medicine etc,” the coach said on condition of anonymity.

“But, it’s okay. In the last two decades we focussed on developing athletes and have achieved decent success. There are Olympic medal winners and world champions. If we start doing the same with coaches now, in another decade or two, we too can be self-sufficient. Cricket is a great example. The senior and junior teams have only Indians as head and assistant coaches. In fact the second-string team going to Sri Lanka will have Indians in coaching roles. They too were dependent on foreigners until a decade ago but not anymore. It just shows if you put your heart and soul into something, results will show.”

One of the reasons behind coaches in other disciplines stagnating is the risks involved. Most players are employed by public sector companies from their playing days and post retirement, they prefer the safe confines of desk jobs rather than continuing to haggle with sporting administrators. Some educated ones even get well-paid private sector jobs. Coaching also involves lots of sacrifices and egos to massage and having endured many such miseries during their respective playing careers, many opt not to tread the same onerous path again. They just take up regular jobs, offer coaching classes at academies or even open their own academies.

Even for the ones who are serious about coaching, the remunerations are poor. Devoting time to coaching national teams means taking a leave of absence from their regular employers and letting go of the confirmed perks. The salary offered by SAI too was not great until last year when the ministry lifted the pay-cap. With India plagued by bureaucracy, it’s one hindrance too many.

“Things are slowly changing now,” reckoned former India player VR Raghunath, who is also the vice-president of Hockey Karnataka and does part-time coaching with junior players of the state team. “Lifting the salary cap for coaches came as a huge boost. There were players from my time who were serious about coaching and a couple of them are making decent strides. The government has realised that to grow as a sporting nation, the ratio between athletes and coaches has to be proportionate. We can’t keep having stop-gap solution consistently from foreigners. We need to harness coaches domestically and it’s happening as I speak. Results obviously will take time. But a start has been made.”

Felix, however, felt if SAI is serious about developing coaches, then it needs to come out with strong programmes. “Athletes have improved a lot now because of various programmes. Then there’s TOPS for potential medal winners. Like how we identify and groom athletes, we need do that with coaches. The evolution of a player to coach is not simple. Not all great players become great coaches and not all great coaches were great players.

“For starters, create a pool of national coaches in every discipline. Coach them, train them and spend money on them. Treat them like you would treat an athlete. Countries like Australia, Netherlands, Germany have strong coaching structures. Study them and try to inculcate them. In due course of time, results will show up.”