Indian players question role of coaches Cyrus Poncha and Bhuvneshwari Kumari in Asiad contingent
The Asian Games-bound Indian squash players have questioned the presence of Cyrus Poncha and Bhuvneshwari Kumari as coaches in the contingent, saying they can only play the role of administrators in the continental mega event in Indonesia.
The eight players picked for the Asian Games have been training without a full-time coach and most of them don’t train regularly with Kumari and Poncha, who has been a longtime national coach.
Sixteen-time national champion Kumari’s credentials as a player cannot be questioned but she is not involved in the functioning of the national team and only travels with the team during multi-sporting events like the Asian Games and Commonwealth Games.
Poncha may be a coach on paper but he is more effective as a man manager. It is also rare for a coach to be a top tournament administrator but not for Poncha, who was the competition director of the World Junior Championships held in Chennai last month.
Technical inputs matter
But more than a manager, the players need technical and tactical advice during close games, something former coach Achraf Karargui could have provided but the Egyptian was fed up with the Squash Rackets Federation of India (SRFI) and resigned before the Commonwealth Games in April.
“For technical inputs during matches, we rely more on each other,” a player told PTI on condition of anonymity.
“Since we don’t have a full-time coach, it doesn’t leave us with much choice. Their role at the Games is more of an administrator than of a coach. Dealing with off the court issues and communication with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) officials,” said another player.
“Since there are no world class coaches available in India, who do you replace them (Poncha and Kumari) with,” the player added.
While Poncha is based in Chennai, the home of the Indian Squash Academy, Kumari runs her own academy in New Delhi. They both went to Asian Games and Commonwealth Games in 2014 and were also part of the contingent in Gold Coast CWG earlier this year.
Ask SRFI: Kumari
Officials at SRFI were unavailable for a comment on the players’ concerns. While Poncha did not answer calls, Kumari said it is the federation, in this case SRFI, which recommends the coaches.
“You should be asking them, not me. I am busy with my academy in Delhi and whenever I am called for national duty, I am more than happy to serve,” she said.
Only last month, India’s highestranked player Saurav Ghosal had lamented the lack of top class coaches in India.
Meanwhile, the players including Ghosal, Joshna Chinappa and Dipika Pallikal, who were training overseas for the Asian Games, have returned to join the camp in Chennai.
The women’s squad is training on its own while world number 23 Declan James of England has flown in to spar with the men.
Besides Ghosal, the other members of the men’s team are Harinder Pal Sandhu, Mahesh Mangaonkar and Ramit Tandon. The women’s team comprises Pallikal, Chinappa, Tanvi Khanna and Sunayna Kuruvilla. The squad leaves for Jakarta on August 18.
However, the presence of physio Dimple Mathivanan is very much welcome by the players. The Sports Ministry has cleared the entire squash contingent on cost to government.
Squash had fetched an unprecedented four medals for India at the 2014 Asian Games, including a men’s team gold. India had finished second behind Malaysia in the medal count in squash.
We’ll know how good we are at Asiad: Nieva
BOXING Indian boxers will know their global standing from their Asian Games show, High Performance Director Santiago Nieva said yesterday and reckoned the draw could play a crucial role in how well the pugilists perform in Jakarta. Seven men and three women pugilists were given an official send-off by the Boxing Federation of India (BFI) and Sports India ahead of their flight for Jakarta tomorrow. “Now we will know how good we are. This will be the test and we will know where we stand because some really strong countries will be there,” Nieva said. The boxers had accounted for five medals — one gold and four bronze — in the 2014 edition in Incheon, South Korea. This was way lower than their best ever performance which came in 2010, when the boxers bagged 2 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze medals in all. “The draw is going to be big and it will be certainly a factor. But we have grown enough to ensure that it is not as big a factor. But this is not going to be that easy,” he said. “We will know where we stand on the world stage and how we are going to do in the world championships next year,” he added.
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