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The Rediff Sports Interview / V Bhaskaran

'I feel I am in the wrong place'

It was an amazing triumph for India in the four-nation hockey tournament, featuring Australia, Germany and South Africa, at Perth last month. The winning goal came with barely a minute left for the final whistle. Dhanraj Pillay scored and India beat Germany 3-2 to win the second leg of the series between the teams.

In the first leg at Sydney, the team was able to finish only third, but it pulled itself together at Perth and showed that it can still figure among the best in the world.

National coach Vasudevan Bhaskaran was undoubtedly a relieved man after the triumph, India's first in international play in five years. "This win is like a vitamin pill for the Olympics," he declared after returning from Australia.

Shobha Warrier met the former India player, who captained the 1980 Moscow Olympics gold medal-winning team. During their conversation, Bhaskaran talked about the sports scene in India, a 'biased media' and, of course, India’s chances in the coming 2000 Olympics.

After India’s victory in the four-nation tournament in Perth, you said you were a relieved man. Were you very tense and under pressure when you went there?

The problem in India is that whenever you go out of the country sports lovers expect you to come back with a trophy. Competition at the international level is so high that it is very difficult to play under pressure. I must also say that the teams from other countries do not have this kind of pressure on them. It is only the Indian team which is constantly under tremendous pressure. Here people and the media expect a team to produce results in one month or two months' time, and this is not applicable to hockey alone but to all sports. This is absolutely unfair.

The way coaches and captains, and members are dumped and then reinstated is also unfair. This is nothing new. I recall, in 1975 India won the gold in the World Cup but to prepare the team for the Olympics, the coach of the team was changed!

That is why I said I was relieved, because the team performed very well on this tour. We had been traveling quite a lot and we did quite well, I feel. I, for one, feel that the build- up is always slow in Indian sports. The players have to play well, and as a coach, I have to do a lot of planning.

And, we work without any basic facilities. We don't have a cameraman, we don’t have a video man, and we don’t have anything that is advantageous to the sport. I think the media and sports lovers should stop criticising and change their attitude.

Do you find it difficult to produce results while competing with countries which have all the modern facilities?

Of course. Imagine Canada, which is not a great power as far as hockey is concerned, carrying their own videos, video man, sports medicine doctors, etc. And I manage to take videos of our players on my own! I have travelled to all the European countries, the US, etc. and seen the facilities they have. I feel so disgusted now. I also feel that I am in the wrong place.

Do you feel disappointed with the way sports and sportsmen, other than cricket of course, are treated in India?

I am disappointed because if we have proper facilities we can do wonders, but nobody is there to apply their mind for the uplift of sports. I would say, sports is only the third citizen of the country!

Who can make a difference to the scene?

It has to be at the Prime Ministerial level now. There is no point in having a Ministry of Sports that deals with files. You admit your child in a good school and then see that he gets a good teacher to teach him. You meet the teacher quite regularly to monitor the studies of the child. Why not adopt the same method in sports too?

Are sports schools an answer to the problem?

Sports schools are not an answer, I feel. Sports is an extra curricular activity in schools but I feel you have to make it a part of the curriculum. Why is sports made 'extra' curricular? If sports is treated as an extra curricular activity, nobody should question our performance and the results too. Nobody has taken care of me in my younger days, so, why should they question my performance now?

You said earlier that the pressure to perform on the Indian team -- whether it is hockey, cricket or football -- from the media and the people is much more here than in other countries. How do the media and the people of other countries treat their sportsmen?

The pressure is much more in India. For example, the German team lost to Malaysia but nobody cried for the head of the coach! Some people in our media are very good but some are very critical. I am not against anybody criticising us, but criticism should be constructive. We won in Australia but nothing much was written about our win. But if we had lost, there would have been several articles criticising us.

In some papers, the headline was, Australia beat South Africa for the third place! I cannot understand the attitude. This is how they encourage us! But in many other countries, they will definitely wait for at least four years to start criticising. Our problem is that we have been brought up like that.

That we are cynical and criticize a lot, but do not appreciate?

Yes. We criticize everyone including our family members. It is a part of our culture. I do not want to blame the media alone for that. It is our culture! But it is disgusting. Our team performed well in Spain but no press person except a journalist from the Deccan Herald came there.

We did so well in the Asia Cup but what did we get in return? Discouragement. I am building a team for the Olympics. Pakistan and Korea are very good teams and I was trying out many options. In the Australasia Cup, we had two tough matches against Germany and Pakistan. I am building up a team; people should understand that.

You mean you are not appreciated...

I don’t want appreciation. Let them criticize. I am not at all against criticism but they shouldn’t try to dominate the team management. I don’t agree with that.

Do you feel hockey gets step-motherly treatment from everyone?

Not from sports lovers. When the team does well, we get a lot of appreciative mail from hockey lovers. There are a lot of people who love hockey. During the 1997 World Cup, I used to receive 800-900 e-mails everyday from all over the country and 60-70 e-mails and faxes from all over the world, from places like England, South Africa, Malaysia, etc! What does it show? That hockey is still alive in the world.

Yesterday itself, I got 8-9 faxes from Malaysia with a lot of suggestions. Many of them have criticized the Indian media for criticizing the team. Many former hockey players also write encouraging letters to me, giving me ideas to improve the team. This is the kind of opinion that I need.

Do you feel the Indian media is irresponsible?

They are good and they are doing a job. I do not want to comment on their job but they should not interfere in the team affairs. Some journalists wrote articles with diagrams that the team should play like this, like that, etc. This is ridiculous. Does that mean what I have been doing in the last six years is absurd? Does that mean I do not have a strategy? Does that mean I as a coach should do what they say?

Let me ask you about the final against European champions Germany at Perth. What was the mental make up of the players before the match?

With every match and every tournament, I am also learning, growing and becoming more knowledgeable. In the last few years, I have been taking training classes for the boys so that they become mentally stronger. I tell them about the experiences of the former successful teams and I help them think positively. Even when they play badly, I don’t shout at them. I call them individually to my room or I go their rooms and talk to them separately. I prefer individual training to group training in this matter. The morning before the match, I will have a chat with the boys together. I see to it that they are not under pressure or tension and I see to it that they are relaxed.

A man who is confident in the morning will be confident the whole day. That is what I tell the boys; get up as a confident and cheerful person. If we have a match at 5 in the evening, I call them at one, after lunch and we have a one-hour match class. I tell them about the plans, strategies, etc. Just before the match, I give them another small class in which I remind them about what we talked in the afternoon. This is what I always do.

So, you play the psychologist’s job also..

I have to. But I feel the real psychological lessons should be given to boys when they are 10 or 14 and not when they are adults. You cannot change the attitude of an adult. Psychological lessons are necessary but not at a later stage, not when they have reached their peaks and have played more than 200 internationals! They should learn to think positively when they are young itself. Training of high calibre should start when a boy is 14 so that by the time he is 20, he will be ready to play Olympics mentally as well physically.

You mean, here in India, we expect gold medals from sports persons who are never given proper training...

Here we identify a person after he comes up on his own. Champions are actually made but we do not make champions. SAI (Sports Authority of India) has done well in sports; at least in hockey. They have produced some good hockey players and athletes but that’s it. Not to the level of winning a gold medal at the Olympics, or winning a gold medal in the Asian Games. To win at the highest level and to sustain the winning streak, you need a professional approach.

Were you disappointed when India came only third at Sydney?

We played well in Sydney and I am happy to say that our boys did an excellent job there. We beat South Africa 3-0 and it was a close match against Australia (3-2) and another close match against Germany too. In Perth, I would say their performance was very, very encouraging. Most of the boys made fewer mistakes.

It was reported that India played near perfect hockey in the final match.

It was near perfect, but I still am not happy. We have to definitely improve. I am getting the fruit of the hard work that we have put in the last few months. That was what I told the media. You need time to get fruits.

A couple of minutes before the final could end, India and Germany were tied at 2-2. What was going on in your mind then?

This year we played against Germany four times and we won once at Perth. All the three games we lost were by close margins - - 2-1, 2-0 and 1-0. But in Perth, well before the tournament started, I told myself that I am winning the tournament as a coach. I asked the boys to put in a little more effort and be the best, and not the second best.

In the morning itself, I shook hands with all the boys and told them, we are winning the tournament today. I had earlier itself predicted that India would win the tournament. It happened. I had an intuition that they would be victorious at Perth. At the game meetings itself, the boys were coming out with suggestions and they even told me their problems. The moment the boys interact with the coach, you will know the difference. The response should come from them. Only when they interact and come out with suggestions, the performance of the team will improve.

In the final, there were only two minutes to go and we were 2-2. It was thirty seconds to go and we had to score a goal. And we did it! It was an excellent performance.

Were you very excited when Dhanraj Pillay scored that goal?

Normally I am not the type of person who shows excitement. I am a humble person and the boys also know it. Joy was there because we won a tournament. Four champions played there and our boys won the cup. So, it was a great victory for them.

I personally feel that they will be more motivated after this victory. The moment you do well, your confidence will also improve and subsequently, your future also will be brighter. I am sure all the boys are happy at home now because their parents are happy, their relatives are happy, their friends are happy and their neighbours are also happy. When you go home after a victory, people will wait to receive you, but if you are a member of a defeated team, even your mother will not be at home; she may have gone for marketing. When he finds that with his win, people around him are happy, he will aim higher and soon he will develop the habit of winning.

All players looked quite fit compared to what they were earlier. How did you manage it?

I had given a lot of stress on endurance. I had set a pace of running for a minimum of 70 minutes at a stretch because the game is played for 70 minutes. Earlier the boys used to run only for 45-50 minutes. I decided to make them run non-stop for 70 minutes. In a week, they run around 25 kilometres. We also have weight-shedding programs, body strengthening programs and we also practice hockey skills. May be I will now make them work a little more in the next four months. We want to increase the pace to 90 minutes of non-stop running, close to 29-30 kilometres in a week. Then, we plan to do some training of penalty-corners. These days, we have three sessions of training instead of the two we had earlier.

I make them hit penalty-corners at least 300 times. I make Jude Menezes practice goalkeeping.

Jude Menezes's goal keeping also was appreciated a lot...

He has been doing very well. The game is so demanding these days that one day you may do well and the other day, it will be a different ball altogether. The game is so fast and you have to do your job every five minutes and then you tend to not sight the ball. Jude responded well in the training and the result showed.

The Indian defense was very strong but the attack was quite weak. Why was it so?

We do attack a lot these days but in certain places, we slow down the attack. I agree that hockey is an attacking game. But if you attack more, the defenders will not get the ball. You tend to get tired too. If you play fast in the forward line, the gap between the forwards and middleman will become large.

So, it was a strategy of yours?

Yes, you can call it a strategy. We do not want the forwards to lose the ball and we also want the attack to be precise. You can take risks if you are sure of attack. Otherwise, they don’t take risks. In some games, attacking more is good but if you are playing against teams like Germany, Holland, if you attack more, the game will be open. Then, you tend to make more mistakes.

Do you prefer defensive play?

Attack with closer defense, I would say. Defense has to be with them mostly so that even if they lose the ball, the attacker can retackle.

Do you think the top teams in the world are almost equal and any team can beat another on a given day? Is it very open at the top?

Yes, it is. When top teams play against each other, a result will come only in the last ten minutes. When teams are equal, they will not take any risks. It is like the slog overs of one-day cricket. So, fitness and mental toughness count a lot today.

Which are the top five teams, according to you?

Holland is one. Australia is good. Pakistan is good. Germany and England are good. Korea is also good.

In the 2000 Olympics, India is in Group B and you have Spain, Australia, South Africa or Argentina and South Korea in the group. Do you think it is an easy group for India?

I think all the twelve teams are very tough. See Malaysia beat Germany. So, you cannot underrate any team. England beat Pakistan in the qualifiers. Like I said earlier, the last ten minutes are crucial. I feel you need a good set of 16 players so that your bench strength is strong. If your bench strength is strong, you can have very good 11 players because you have the option of changing them.

You were not happy with Dhanraj Pillai’s attitude earlier. Has he changed now?

After the Asian Games victory, he is a happier man. He is a much, much happier man than what I saw of him ten years back. If a man is happy, his attitude changes. If a man is happy at home, he will face all the problems in the office in a cool manner. It is a good that he has changed because he is very important player. His performance level has increased.

Talent-wise, how do you rate the Indian team?

Ttalent-wise, we are the best, I would say. But we need a revolution to tap more talent. I feel ashamed to see that the government has increased the sports budget by ten crores. The Indian government spends ten crores for a small function! But the government is not concerned. Unless we make sports a part of our life, we will not be world-beaters in sports. That is why I said: 'We need a revolution in sports.'

Earlier Interview:
'I want players who can play eight games consistently'
"I'll tell you what actually happened..."
'Hockey is not dying, it is being killed'

Interviews