As I was reading the Newspaper this morning, one news that was hogging the limelight was our Hockey Team's exit from the Olympics Qualifier. I saw that the Coach Carvalho has submitted his resignation taking ownership for the exit, his 11 months term came to a premature end because of this failure. I also saw some ex-players asking KPS Gill, President, IHF to resign owning up responsibility for the same. Looking at this, thoughts just ran across my mind and I thought I can vent the same here.
As a Project Manager, I also manage teams and I have to fight against lot of odds and deliver projects, I am compelled to draw out a comparison between my team and a sports team. When a project comes to my organisation, it is assigned to a Project Manager and he then will have to understand the project and work with the concerned functional team to get the team he needs for the project and also the infrastructure that is needed to execute the same. Once this happens, its the PM's responsibility to get the project delivered successfully. This could mean that he has to understand the team dynamics, take care of their aspirations, take care of their inclusions, take care of the value they provide to the team, keep the customer informed, keep the management informed and asking for help, etc.
In this process, if the management fails to provide the necessary infrastructure, they are to be blamed for the project failure. Incase the PM feels that the team member is not good enough then it would be his responsibility to discipline, coach, mentor and get the team member contribute. Even after all this the team member fails, then he should not hesitate to show the doors for the team member. Incase he has done all these and still the team fails, the blame should be on the team or rather the facilitator of these team members.
If the PM gets the right infrastructure and the team and still is not able to motivate the team to give its best performance, then the PM should take the responsibility and should be axed.
Drawing parallel to Indian hockey, first and foremost I feel that it is too premature to ask for the head of the Coach, Captain, President etc. This has to be completely analysed and we have to diagnose what went wrong and where did it go wrong and fix the problem. Lets not jump to any conclusion, this is the same team which won the Asia Cup, just six months back and their performance was appreciated by everyone. Nothing has changed in the Six months time, same coach, captain, administrators etc. So lets be patient, its very easy to blame someone, we have to understand the issues and concerns that hampered a performing team. I am sure that no one wants to be a part of a losing team. That to when they are representing the nation, there would be lot of spirit.
Looking at it from a different angle, we are becoming too sentimental, this has become an issue just because we have always qualified for the Olympics since 1928. So leaving out the sentiments, we need to look at it progressively. We are an Eight Time Olympic champion team, what happened to the quality of our game. This could happen for two reasons, One, We are playing good hockey but our opponents are playing even better, Two, our quality has really gone bad. I strongly feel that the second one is not true.
Analysing the first point more, the eight gold medals that we have won have predominantly been on grass and tradiitionally this is the turf that we have been playing our hockey, where our artistic dribbling helps in winning matches. But when Hockey moved to Astro turf, it became more of a power and speed game, which we are not really good at. Does this mean that we are not good at adapting to changes ? I would not say so. This problem is something that you see in Cricket too, we have been traditionally depending on spin bowling and we never really used to have any pace bowlers, but with shorter versions of the game becoming largely popular, spin bowling lost its importance and it took sometime for our team to come to terms and now you see we are world beaters and we have genuine speedsters in the team.
But getting the same done in Hockey is not as easy as we did in Cricket. First and foremost the lack of sponsors, today parents encourage their children to play Cricket and Tennis, because of the money that is involved in the sport. So all the corporate houses should come forward to encourage the people who take up hockey, as it is our national game, there has to be lot more interest in that sport. Why is the money so important for hockey, because, traditionally we have been getting our hockey players from the regions of Chotta Nagpur, Interior Karnataka, North Eastern States, Punjab. I am not sure if these places do boast of an Astro turf ground. There players traditionally play on normal ground with bare foot, etc. and once they become national players will have to start playing in Astro Turf and it does take a while for them to get accustomed to that before which they are already written off. So we need to bring up some Astro Turf Stadiums and encourage people to play in these grounds, so that they can mould their game according to the International grounds right from the begining of their careers.
Sometimes it helps for us to think a little away from tradition, the ex players who are now being the coach have also been pracititioners of the traditional gameplay that we have been playing. May be it helps to hire a coach from Australia or Netherlands it helps. For some reason the IT jobs are being moved from US to India, the same way lets get the best person for the job.
You may think what have I got to do with it, you can do, you have a commitment to the National game, Watch Hockey when it is telecasted in Television, the more we see, the more we can help the game get sponsorship. Why do you think Cricket has so much, it is just because you and I follow the game.
