Indian tennis has been delivering the medals, including the gold consistently in the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games, but has been consistently ignored for cash awards instituted by the Union Sports Ministry.
When the government cleared 100-odd coaches to receive more than Rs. 5.5 crore at a function at the National Stadium on Monday, none of the tennis coaches were found fit to receive any incentive.
India had won the men's singles and doubles gold, men's team bronze, women's singles bronze apart from the mixed doubles silver in the Asian Games. In the Commonwealth Games, India had accounted for the men's singles gold, doubles bronze, women's singles silver and the doubles bronze.
A core group of coaches had been conducting regular training camps for nearly two years in preparation of the two events. It is another matter though that key players, Somdev Devvarman and Sania Mirza, who were instrumental in winning eight of those nine medals were busy on the professional circuit, and rarely found any time to attend the training camps conducted by the national federation.
The chief of the coaching panel in tennis, former Davis Cup captain Jaidip Mukherjea said that it was ‘most unfair' that tennis coaches, who had toiled like coaches in any other discipline, were ignored for the award. He said that he would take up the matter with the Union Sports Minister, Ajay Maken.
Nandan Bal has been the men's coach for a long time, including the Indian Davis Cup team, and Enrico Piperno has been with the women's team including the Fed Cup teams for a long time. Both have not got any cash awards even for the previous achievements of the Indian teams in the Asian Games.
They have a grouse that the government treats tennis as an elite sport and does not consider their cases even for the Dronacharya award.
For all its achievements, including the Olympic bronze medal won by Leander Paes in the Atlanta Games in 1996, when Mukherjea was the coach, tennis does not have a single Dronacharya awardee.
Countering the argument of SAI, which stipulates the medal winning players must have attended the national camp for a certain number of days for the coaches to become eligible for incentive awards, Mukherjea wondered whether the prime objective was to win medals or attend camps.
“The professional players train and compete round the year. They can't attend these camps but we are in constant touch with them,” said Mukherjea.
Unlike in tennis in which professional coaches are hired by individual players, Indian shooting has professional foreign coaches attached to the team.
However, that does not stop the ‘core' group of Indian coaches, who had also been paid a regular salary, from receiving cash awards to the tune of Rs. 1.44 crore from the government.
The four shotgun coaches were paid Rs. 37 lakh in all for one gold and two bronze medals in Asian Games apart from, three silver and one bronze medal in the Commonwealth Games.
The rifle and pistol coaches, nine of them, including the national coach Prof. Sunny Thomas were given a total purse of Rs. 1.07 crore for the team's 14 gold, 8 silver and 4 bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games apart from three silver and two bronze medals in the Asian Games.
All it required was the presence of the core group of coaches during the camps to gain a cash award of 11,96,296 rupees each.
Not all of them were required to perform the role of the coaches; they were at best expected to ‘manage' the camps.
