IHF Flip Flop Has Team Groping

Controversies had their major share as Indian hockeycontinued to suffer at the hands of its own administrators who experimented withthe team throughout the year but without any success at all.

Unceremonious removal of Rajinder Singh, appointment ofthe first-ever foreign coach, Gerhard Rach, omission of mercurial strikerDhanraj Pillay from the Olympics probables' list and his subsequent recall inthe wake of a public outcry, positive testing of Tejbir Singh for a banned drugand Sports Ministry's rapping of the IHF -- the game saw it all in just oneyear.

So it were the off-field antics rather than on-fieldperformances which hogged the limelight in the Olympic year.

The fortunes of the team, struggling to retain itsplace among the top in the world, slumped further despite the appointment ofRach.

The German's appointment came after the Indian HockeyFederation sacked Rajinder under controversial circumstances just before thestart of Olympic Games in Athens in August, but the German failed to arrest thesliding fortunes of the side that ended the year without a single title.

The women and junior teams, on the other hand, had aslightly better year in comparison as they clinched the Asia Cup titles in theirrespective categories for their only triumphs in the entire calender year.

In contrast to last year, when the men's team won almost all the tournament theyplayed in, 2004 saw the side failing to win even a single event even though itdid manage to beat teams like Ireland and Belgium in Test series. The worstperformance came in the Olympics where the team lost against teams like NewZealand to finish a dismal seventh.

If the year started disastrously for the team, theIndians finishing last in the Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia, it also ended on ahugely disappointing note -- a fourth place finish in the Champions Trophy inLahore.

In between the side did hardly anything noteworthybesides being in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Rajinder, who was given the senior team's charge in2002 after Cedric D'Souza was sacked mid-way through the Malaysia World Cup, wasremoved in almost similar fashion.

Rach, who was Rajinder's deputy in the four-nationtournament in Holland before the Olympics, took over just two weeks before themega event and not surprisingly, the IHF kept the reasons for Rajinder's removalonly to itself.

When Rach was appointed, the Federation came up withclaims that the foreigner had the expertise to ensure India a podium finish inAthens, but that was not to be as the eight-time gold medallists were knockedout of the medal race half-way through the competition.

The debacle prompted IHF to vent its ire towards seniorplayers and ignored them for the eight-match Test series between India andPakistan that followed the mega event.

In the absence of Pillay, Baljit Singh Dhillon, Deepak Thakur and Gagan AjitSingh, India played with a completely new forwardline in the first-ever seriesbetween the arch-rivals in five years and not surprisingly they lost 4-2 despitea good show by some of the young members of the side under captain Dilip Tirkey.

The seniors failed to make a comeback as the IHFdecided to play a waiting game and India, who got a place in the ChampionsTrophy by default, went to the elite six-nation contest with the same team thathad played against Pakistan.

India made the grade after Olympic champions Australiapulled out citing security reasons, but they could not make an impression,losing four of their six matches to finish outside the medal bracket.

The lackadaisical approach of the IHF could be blamedfor the team's dwindling fortunes as the powers-that-be seemed to have failed toidentify the problems crippling the national game.

The IHF even got a rap from the then Sports MinisterVikram Verma over its selction policy following which the Federation set up aselection committee.

But even that failed to improve things which wasevident from the comments of the incumbent Sports Minister Sunil Dutt who saidrecently "It seems no one is happy (with the functioning of the IHF)."But amidst all the gloom, there was a silver lining as well.

Upsetting all predictions, the women's team lifted theirfirst-ever Asia Cup title at home although they lost all other tournamentsplayed throughout the year.

PTI