By Abhishek Roy, IANS
Ludhiana : Former India hockey captain Pargat Singh flayed the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) again Tuesday saying that the national body was “killing” the established teams by creating new regional ones.
“The IHF is killing the departmental teams by creating teams like Shere Jalandhar and Chennai Veerans. These teams have no fan following as compared to the departmental teams of Punjab Police or BSF,” said Singh.
The former Olympian was speaking on the sidelines of the semi-final match of the 29th Federation Cup football tournament between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal at the Guru Nanak Stadium here.
“They (IHF) have to change their psyche otherwise we can’t cash in on the success of our Asia Cup win. There is lack of organisation and there is no base of hockey in the country,” said Singh, who is the director of sports in Punjab.
“We need to have more domestic tournaments at the grass-roots level to create a big pool of players. I think now we have a pool of 20-25 players for the national team but ideally it should be above 300,” said Singh.
The former captain lauded the Indian team for retaining the Asia Cup saying, “Beating South Korea was an incredible achievement”.
“The team is playing as a team now. This was not seen in the past few tournaments and Joaquim Carvalho has done a good job and should be given more time.
“Carvalho was also appointed for the Asia Cup. But I think he should be given a tenure of three to four years. A coach always needs time to plan his strategy for the team,” said Singh.