Maharaj Krishan Kaushik had coached the Indian hockey team to their last Asian Games gold in the Bangkok Asiad of 1998. Now, as an assistant to India’s interim coach Roeland Oltmans, this former Olympic champion has the tough task of mentoring the team to a World Cup qualification next month. He chats up with Ajeyo Basu
How much of a challenge will it beIJ
We have a challenging job on our hands, there is no doubt about that. The first target is obviously to qualify for the World Cup to be held next year. For that we have to win the Asia Cup. We are totally focused on that at the present moment.
Your appointment as the assistant coach of the Indian team comes just before the Asia Cup. That must have made your job more challengingIJ
No, not particularly. It is anyway a big challenge. I am not thinking of making too many changes to the team right now. We still have more than a month to go for the Asia Cup. I am working with chief coach Roeland Oltmans to prepare the team. The boys are working very hard and we are expecting a positive result. We should do well.
What is your opinion of India’s pool at the Asia CupIJ
We are placed in Pool B. South Korea is the toughest team in our pool. But we have the ability to beat them. We cannot underestimate any team.
What are the areas of the Indian team that you would like to improveIJ
In the last few tournaments, I have noticed that our players have created a lot of penalty corner chances. But our conversion is really quite poor. That should not be the case with two or three penalty corner specialists in the team. We have to improve our penalty corner conversion. We should also focus on conceding less penalty corners. The team also tends to concede goals from counter attacks. The defence needs to improve.
Do you intend to make changes to former coach Michael Nobbs’ policy of favouring young playersIJ
Not yet. After the Asia Cup, we will take stock and make changes as and when needed.
Your earlier stint as Indian coach was way back in 1998. How has hockey changed in all these yearsIJ
Changes are constantly happening in international sports. All the different teams try to bring in new systems and methods in order to gain an advantage over the others. Hockey has changed quite a lot. The game has become much faster. Penalty corners have become more important. At that time, Indian teams did not give too much extra emphasis on physical training. But now our players go through extremely rigorous physical conditioning and the results are there before us. Our Indian players are much more fit than before and can hold their own against the fittest teams in the world. Earlier Indian teams use to concede goals during the last five to ten minutes of a match. But that is not the case anymore. Now they are able to maintain the intensity.
The Indian team last won gold medal at the Asian Games in 1998 under your guidance. Describe the experience.
The team was very strong. We had a lot of extremely talented players. We also got a lot of support from the governsment and the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF). Whatever I asked from them for training and preparation of the team, was provided to me. There was a lot of unity and mutual respect between all the players. They worked really hard as well. Discipline sometimes used to be a problem for Indian teams but that was not the case with us. A successful player or team needs to make a lot of sacrifices and the players were lot lacking in this respect. These were the main reasons behind our success.
Until the early years of the last decade, there used to be several exceptional players in the Indian team. But of late, India seems to have stopped producing world class players…..
No, that is not the case. We still have world class players like Sardar Singh, Gurvinder Chandi and many others. We have a good team with good players, but we need to produce results.