Pargat says not fair to only blame Nobbs for team’s slide

Former India hockey captain Pargat Singh, who played a key role in the appointment of Michael Nobbs as national coach in June 2011, blames the Australian as much as the lack of infrastructure in the country for India’s slide at the international level.

Hockey India sacked Nobss after a meeting on Friday, making him another foreign coach who could not revive the dipping fortunes of Indian hockey.

Pargat told

IANS that Nobbs was never a top coach, but was the best option under the circumstances.

“There were not many options available at that time. Roelant Oltmans (who is currently India’s high performance manager) was too costly and in that context, Nobbs fitted the bill. At the least, we thought he would be able to inculcate the good things of Australian hockey in our players,” said Pargat.

The former defender, however, stressed that it was not fair to only blame Nobbs for the team’s poor run.

“The best coach in the world will be no good if you don’t have a system in place. We have no structure at the grassroot level. A few top teams continue to dominate the nationals and you have scorelines such as 20-0. The weaker and strong teams are all playing at the same time. The process should be streamlined where the best of the weaker States qualify to play teams like Punjab,” said the 48-year-old.

While Pargat got Nobbs to India, it was under the Australian that another former captain Rajpal Singh was sidelined. The man from Perth wanted to flood the team with youngsters, ignoring the likes of Rajpal, Arjun Halappa, Shivendra Singh and Sandeep Singh.

“I was removed after leading the team to victory in the Asian Champions Trophy in 2011. The policy apparently was to get youngsters and phase out the established names. Clearly, that has not worked out,” Rajpal said.

As for Nobbs, Rajpal said: “Nobbs was weak with his strategy and it was most visible with his actions during the Olympics. I would say Brasa (Jose) was much better than him.”

Looking ahead, he hopes a capable coach will take charge of the team.

“Indian or foreign, the coach should be good. We should focus more on the performance rather than having high performance managers.”