Four-time Olympian great forward Dhanraj Pillay Said that the Indian women’s hockey team, which had failed to qualify for the Paris Olympics, lacked experienced players and he did not feel that the team needed a foreign coach. running in Ranchi FIH Olympic Women’s Hockey Qualifier In the third place match, Japan defeated India 1-0. Germany and America have already qualified by reaching the finals. After finishing at the historic fourth place in the Tokyo Olympics, the entire focus of the Indian women’s hockey team was on the Paris Olympics but the team missed out on directly qualifying through the Asian Games. This qualifier was his only chance and he lost it.
Senior players were ignored
Dhanraj, who has played four Olympics and four World Cups, said in an interview to Bhasha, ‘In the last one and a half years, women hockey coaches were given complete freedom. But three-four experienced players yearned to return to the team and were removed from the team by calling them senior. Without naming Rani Rampal, who was the captain of the team in Tokyo Olympics, he said that these girls performed well in domestic hockey and national games. It is in the hands of the coach how to make the senior players perform well by keeping them in the team. It was not right to throw him out without giving him a chance. Its result is visible.
We don’t need foreign coaches
He said that this was the time that experienced players should have been in the team to guide the junior players. There was no coordination in the forward line, although the team missed Vandana Kataria who was out due to injury. Dhanraj said that the same thing happened with me too when after the 1998 Asian Games, seven people including me were dropped but I played for six more years. He said that there was no need to ignore former Indian players and bring in foreign coaches when results were not being achieved.
Pillai wants to become the coach of the team
He said, ‘I don’t think we needed a foreign coach. We had an FIH qualified coach like Harendra Singh who was ignored. Today he is America’s high performance coach and has won us the Junior World Cup. Dhanraj said, ‘I wanted to serve Indian hockey but no one asked me to become a coach. Hockey is my life and passion, but no one ever tried to take my services. If I had been offered, I would have been fully prepared and could have given a lot with my experience.
Disorientation affected performance
He also took the Indian players to task and said that the team appeared to be a victim of complacency and did not try to learn lessons from its mistakes. He said, ‘Not being able to score a goal on nine penalty corners against Japan is not a small thing. Players should have maintained some distance from social media in view of the Olympic year. One can focus on performance only by avoiding distractions.
It will take a lot of time to recover from this defeat
He said, ‘The government is spending so much on sports and the Prime Minister himself meets you. In such a situation, it is your duty to keep full focus on performance in return. Dhanraj said that it will take a long time for women’s hockey to recover from this setback. She said that by not qualifying for the Olympics, women’s hockey will go far behind. The men’s hockey team also took a long time to recover after not qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now there is a need to move forward by making the right strategy.