Should Indian sports administrators rethink the need for foreign coaches?

By Shamya Dasgupta
Some people are quiet; some so quiet you forget they are around.

That would have been the case with Duncan Fletcher if the Indian cricket team had continued to do well after the Test and One-Day International victories against Australia as well as the Champions Trophy win in England; all of them in 2013. Those victories had papered over ‘10-1’ — the combined scoreline after tours of England and Australia and England’s tour of India — somewhat. For a while, it even seemed as though the transition from the era of the Big Boys to the next one would be smooth.

While that was happening, Fletcher was okay. No one missed him, or noticed him.

Then, even though the series in South Africa and New Zealand didn’t go well, they were all right. The defeats weren’t humiliating.

Not so any more. The trend on social and mainstream media suggests that most people remember ‘Slam Dunc’ — and without a trace of fondness. According to the latest update, his bosses appear to agree, Ravi Shastri having been placed above him in the dressing room hierarchy.

Foreign Affairs

Now that’s consistent with how most Indian sporting associations have dealt with coaches, especially the foreign ones, over the years. The idea behind getting coaches from overseas is simple: there’s modern expertise that’s not available in India, so import someone who can get the Indians up and thereabouts. Besides, the understanding is that a foreign coach will not be affected by the regional, zonal and many other varieties of politics that afflict Indian sport.

As a result, we have had a series of foreign coaches for the football team, for the hockey team, four of them for the cricket team, and many more for the contingents — athletics, shooting, etc — that go to the Olympic Games. The cricket team does well often, but that can’t be said of the other teams. In sports where the Indians routinely do well (shooting being a case in point) the achievements are, as the cliché goes, despite the system and not because of it. Abhinav Bindra, for example, uses his own money to train abroad.



In the past decade, the Indian men haven’t won a major hockey tournament apart from the Asia Cup in 2007 and the Sultan Azlan Shah Cups in 2009 (in which only five teams played) and 2010 (the final was abandoned and the honours shared with South Korea). The coach has changed repeatedly — Terry Walsh, the former Australian player, is the latest — but the team is still ranked No. 9 in the world. The women’s team, coached by Neil Hawgood, another former Australian player, is at No. 12. The Indian football team, now coached by former Dutch player Wim Koevermans, is at No. 150. And much like many former Indian cricketers, former hockey players (vigorously) and former footballers (less so) have criticised the obsession with foreign coaches. The arguments are usually the same, typically along the lines of ‘Indians understand Indians better’.

Dhanraj Pillay, for the umpteenth time, said the other day, “Indian coaches can do much better than the foreign coaches, because Indian coaches know our players’ strength and weakness.” About Fletcher, Bishan Singh Bedi said last month, “I have always believed that the Indian team’s coach has to be Indian. This mercenary nonsense has to stop some time.”

As such, it all comes down to the resources at hand: personnel, administrative support, finances, infrastructure, policies and much else. And there can’t be any debate that — leave out personnel for the moment — Indian cricket has it much better than the other team sports.