Indian hockey in a mess — Leslie Claudius

The former ace defender was here to receive the Sportstar living legend award.

Asked if switching over to astro turf was entirely responsible for the decline of Indian hockey, as it was being made out, he said: to a large extent, yes. Only a few states have the astro turf facility,” he pointed out.

“Look at what happened at the Sydney Olympics. We wasted a great opportunity to make it to the semi-finals due to ignorance. Our players keep on making the same mistakes,” he said.

Asked if repeated change of coaches was the reason for the bad performance, Claudius said, “They (IHF) do keep changing the coaches. Baskaran did a good job.”

He expressed pessimism over the reappointment of Cedric D’Souza. “Why have they recalled Cedric? He may be technically very good but he was not a great player, so the boys do not have sombody to look up to.”

Claudius said it would be effective to appoint coaches separately to train forwards, midfielers, goalkeepers and defenders. He said he preferred the appointment of former internationals who had excelled as players in each of these departments.

“We have brilliant players who also have the ability to coach, they should have been appointed to groom talent. To bring individual brilliance to perfection,” he said.

He also opined that the game of astro turf required all-round skills one has to play equally well in attack and defence.

He, however, did not agree that IHF could be blamed entirely for the state of affairs of Indian hockey. “They are responsible only for good administration like appointment of coaches. Afterall, a coach cannot take the field itself, he can only tell the player what to do,” he said.