Balbir Singh accuse Harendra Singh for taking out of shape players to Azlan Shah Cup: Hockey News
Balbir Singh, the team manager of the Indian men’s national hockey team, has blamed the team’s head coach, Harendra Singh, to deliberately take the unfit players to the recently held Sultan Azlan Shah Cup Hockey Tournament, in May.
Balbir further stated that the reason of poor performance of the team, at the Malaysian Invitational was because of the communication gap between both the coach and the team members.
This claim was in the performance review report that was submitted to Hockey India (HI) after the meeting held today, on May 31.
Further in his report, Balbir claimed that an unfit player like Sarvanjit Singh had been recommended by the coach and his support staff was taken to Malaysia, despite the fact that he had not completely recovered from his injury. The same point was
raised during the meeting. However, Harendra gave clearance to the selection of the mid-fielder into the team.
In the report, Balbir commented that Sarvanjit was no more than a mere passenger who travelled with the team to Malaysia, considering the performance which he gave there on the field.
Harendra and the team captain, Arjun Halappa accepted Balbir’s point about the lack of communication from both the coach’s and players’ ends that brought out such a performance. He dejected Harendra for his methods of coaching and said, “The plan was
not drilled properly into the mind of players as they are not sure of their role to be displayed at crucial junctures.”
Furthermore, the manager also criticised the team’s potential to play and stated them as a 35-minute team who lacked the fundamentals of the sport and the skills required to play well.
On the bright side, he praised Rupinder Pal Singh, the star of the tournament, who gave a commendable performance. On the other hand, the other senior players were very disappointing, especially Halappa, who needs to be replaced soon.
Above all, the highlight of the report was that the Indian hockey team is in dire need of a foreign coach like Paul Lissek or the remarkable Australian coach, Ric Charlesworth. These coaches will help train the players in accordance to the modern techniques
of the sport, which the team currently lacks.
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