The Paul van Ass saga: While Batra and coaches battle, Indian hockey is the loser

Current Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal would sit on a chair when Ajax manager Ronald Koeman would put his team through the paces. Not once or twice, but for a whole week. van Gaal was technical director of Ajax then. In one instance, he also asked Zlatan Ibrahimovic to position himself in a particular area — and the striker scored. All this was a complete disrespect of the manager’s authority.

Koeman may have won that battle with van Gaal [he used the media to force the latter out> — but another Dutch coach — in another sport, hockey, has lost his job.

Paul van Ass claimed today that he was sacked by Hockey India (SAI and Batra have claimed otherwise – so this is still a subject of some debate). This is after Hockey India chief Narinder Batra gave a post-match team talk to the side after the 3-2 win over Malaysia in the Hockey World League semifinals in Belgium. van Ass, rightly, asked Batra to leave the field — team talks were his department — and while the HI chief left the pitch, he made sure van Ass knew that his behaviour was not acceptable.

The coach/manager has on-field authority: tactics, training sessions and in most cases, transfers. As soon as an administrator interferes in this territory — trouble is not far away.

Twenty days later after the HWL, Batra is still HI chief — and the man who led The Netherlands to a silver medal at the 2012 Olympics, is gone.

“They can sack me, it’s in their power. But don’t blame me – they asked me not to be there [at national camp in Himachal Pradesh> and they didn’t send me a ticket. The reason I’m not there is because they didn’t want me to be there [after the HWL>. You have to ask Batra [on the spat>. I cannot handle that [interfering>,” van Ass told NDTV.

van Ass made it very clear that he was asked to step down against his wishes: “I don’t complain [about being fired>, but at least take the responsibility that they don’t want me there. I didn’t step down, I didn’t say I don’t want to come back. I was fired exactly a week after Belgium. I’m still waiting for official documents in the mean time.”

This is the second sacking in less than a year. Terry Walsh, under whom India won the Asian Games gold medal – thus guaranteeing Rio 2016 qualification – was sacked just 47 days after the achievement. The reason given was ‘beurocratic intervention’. That eerily sounds similar to what van Ass — who lasted for less than six months — went through.

In fact, van Ass’s predecessors Jose Brasa, Michael Nobbs (and Walsh) — all of whom were hired by SAI on the recommendations of HI at hefty salaries — left their jobs on unceremonious notes.

But this is hardly surprising. Batra’s reputation is that he wants the credit when the hockey team does well and doesn’t like it when the coaches get all the praise. This is not the first time he has courted controversy either — during the standoff with Walsh, he dug up old dirt between the coach and USA Hockey.

“I can’t have anyone working with us who has been accused of financial impropriety. I am willing to keep him but first this issue needs to be resolved, otherwise we can’t have him. My fundamentals are very clear. If govt wants to keep a tainted person, I am willing to quit in the morning. Let the government and Terry Walsh take hockey forward I am ready to quit. I will not have any tainted person in Hockey India,” he told The Indian Express in November 2014, to which Walsh said: “It surprises me that he (Batra) would raise this issue without speaking to me first.”

There’s also the well-documented court case he fought for KPS Gill’s ouster from the Indian Hockey Federation. But the stick2hockey article says this about the case: “Batra joined the Indian Olympic Association lobby against whom he filed the case. He was short-sighted, greedy and could not wait more for getting posts. Very unfortunately, he switched sides and started hobnobbing with the same people against whom he fought in the court.”

All this points to one fact: Batra cannot be trusted, he picks fights with anyone who gets in the way, and more importantly: he gets rid of them. No one has been able to stand in the way of his wishes.

“In a short span of time Batra has achieved so much of clout that he has started to believe he is the man destined to run Indian sport. He has an opinion on every sports controversy, keeping his secretariat busy dashing off mails to all and sundry,” a Sportskeeda profile reads.

Under van Ass, the team looked fitter, fought harder and employed a quick counter-attacking method. The HWL, which was mainly a competitive experiment for the side, was used as an opportunity for van Ass to use younger, faster and more creative players like Harmanpreet Singh, Gurmail Singh and Jasjit Singh (who scored the two penalty corners in India’s win over Malaysia).

Even against Pakistan in the same tournament, India gave up a 1-0 lead to go down 1-2, before fighting back to 2-2. In numerous interviews, van Ass would talk about making India mentally a stronger team — and tightening the gaps in defence. His boldest decision was to drop a not-fully-fit drag-flicker Rupinder Pal Singh for sake of ’trying variations’.

On midfielder SK Uthappa’s ouster from the side before the HWL semis, he said: “It’s not over for the boys, they are not gone. I think he (Uthappa) doesn’t play the way he is supposed to. He is a big athelete, his body is very big but he doesn’t use it too much. I asked him to do that more and he can comeback again. During team selections you have to be your best and also you have to fit in the tactical plan of coach.”

van Ass, with moderate success, shook up the team a bit — there was a feeling that no one’s position, however high-profile a name, was guaranteed.

However, all these experiments and changes will never be realised. This group of players will have to adjust to someone else’s demands now — a new coach, new ideas, new tactics and new methods — all because an administrator decided to give a post-match team talk — which, he is not supposed to do.

Not the best way to prepare for the Olympics (India were the first nation to qualify for the 2016 event) but someone should trying telling Batra that.