Hockey India Secretary-General Narender Batra announced that a High Performance Manager (HPM) will be appointed to whom the National coaches would report, says a report in The Hindu.
“Call him a High Performance Manager or Director, many top hockey playing countries have this concept. He will oversee both men’s and women’s teams. We are in discussion with a chosen few and will make the appointment by mid-October,” said Batra.
Talking about the poor performance of the Indian hockey team at the recently concluded London Olympics, Batra said, “at this point, I really don’t know what exactly went wrong. From whatever I’ve gathered from the coaches, players so far, I think the team just could not lift itself from the early losses. Perhaps, a good sports psychologist could have helped.”
Meanwhile, The Times of India reports that Batra played down reported comments by a certain player who had blamed coach Michael Nobbs for the poor performance. Batra confirmed that both Nobbs and physio David John will continue their job.
Batra said, “Instead of blaming anybody, we are more interested in finding a solution. HI owns responsibility for letting the country down and hockey legend Dhyan Chand.”
Batra added, “Instead of 48 juniors and 48 seniors in the camps, we now propose to have 33 junior, 33 development players and 33 senior players.”
On Indian team playing the top teams of the world on a continuous basis, he said, “India would also be playing at least three series against top teams like Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and England from next year onwards. Out of these three series, one will be against Pakistan.”
