CHENNAI: A year before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, an Indian coach who was conferred with the Dronacharya Award in 2003, was asked to join the national camp as one of the national coaches in athletics. The government policy at that point of time could pay a remuneration of Rs 30,000 per month. What complicated matters was even if the officials wanted, they could not have raised the cap. It was the policy. Understandably, the coach refused. At the same time, the coach said that international coaches were paid at least $5000-10000 per month those days. But when it came to remuneration for Indian coaches, the policy did not allow them to pay anything more than Rs 30,000 per month to him.
Things have changed over the years. Committees and expert panels were formed to look into coaches’ requirements. Profiles of coaches too have undergone considerable change with top former international athletes opting to choose this new vocation. And some of them have been quite successful. There are numerous examples in individual sports like shooting, badminton, athletics, boxing, wrestling, where Indian coaches have produced results. Take this year alone. Shooters who won medals at the Paris Olympics had personal coaches. Likewise in badminton one P Gopichand ushered in a coaching revolution. Not very long ago, Anju Bobby George became the first Indian athlete to win a World Championships medallist with husband and coach Robert Bobby George by her side. Similar examples do exist in other sports (notably individual) as well. At the same time Neeraj Chopra’s success can be attributed to German bio-mechanic expert Klaus Bartonietz or for that matter the hockey team under various foreign coaches and support staff.
Focus on remunerations
Following consultation and deliberations, policies have been modified. As per new policy the salaries have been fixed. According to an advertisement in 2024 for Sports Authority of India (SAI) coaches, a High Performance coach’s pay scale is Rs 123100 – Rs 215900 (a consolidated payment of Rs 2,20,000 on contractual engagement. A senior coach is eligible for Rs 67,700 — Rs 208700 and on contractual agreement it is Rs 1.25 lakh. Yet, there is still a huge disparity between the salary structure of foreign and Indian coaches. Right now, going by the sports ministry's answers in the Parliament, a top foreign coach gets about Rs 10-20 lakh.
There has been a mini exodus of coaches to other countries like the US, Singapore, Australia and Canada. Though this is prevalent across sports, badminton has seen this trend recently.
The sports ministry is trying to concentrate on engaging more Indian coaches in their national camps and other National Centres of Excellence (NCOEs). The ministry along with the Target Olympics Podium (TOP) Scheme has already started to revise policies that would be attractive for Indian coaches. There were discussions even during the last Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) meeting on incentivising Indian coaches' remunerations. The thrust would be to attract top players and coaches into the system and the remuneration will be more result based.
Apart from leaving India for a lucrative profession, there are a host of player-turned-coaches who are running academies or engaged in PSU companies. The main challenge would be to get their services. Like one senior coach pointed out, there is no point bringing in coaches without proven records. And the challenge would be to give these new breed of international medallists a congenial platform to work.
Money is one area that has been forcing coaches out; another factor that seems to be going against retaining them is respect. There are a lot of top coaches who felt the government may be working towards something positive but unless the coaches get space to work and also get the same respect accorded to foreign coaches. The main reason is too many hurdles in the system. They have to report or submit a report to someone who is not aware of training or coaching. The people in federations and even in SAI don't really understand the nuances of coaching top players but would gauge their performance on some set parameters. And then they are answerable to them which top players and coaches are not comfortable with.
At the moment there are international medallists including Olympic and Worlds who can start coaching. The question is whether we have a system that would attract them to coaching? The sports ministry and SAI are doing their bit but there are other areas they have to look at.
Clarity of role
This was one of the points raised by Jaspal Rana during a conversation last year ahead of the Olympics. One has to respect the coach even if he or she may be a personal coach. They should not be ignored. This has been voiced by many top coaches and they feel top coaches should not be reporting to some junior official in the SAI or ministry or even in federations. One coach even pointed out that in terms of seniority, they are equivalent to if not the SAI director general, at least deputy director general or executive director. One coach even pointed out that it should not be a case where the National Sports Federation (NSF) hires them and fires them on their whims and fancy. There are federations who continue with coaches without results as well. Sometimes there is no clarity of role for coaches, which leads to confusion and overlapping of responsibilities.
S Raman, who has been a national coach in table tennis and has chosen this profession because it appealed to his heart, felt that foreign coaches should be hired where necessary but nowadays there are Indian coaches who are equally good. He felt that there should be set parameters to hire foreign coaches.
“Some sports require foreign coaches throughout the year because they have longer periods of training and camps,” he said. “Where there is a dearth of Indian coaches, they can hire foreign coaches. But then there should be a proper evaluation process just like they follow for Indian coaches. There has to be clear criteria. I say that in the context of my sport. Nowadays Indian coaches are also well-equipped and are in some cases even getting better than their foreign counterparts. On an average, one has to agree that foreign coaches are better but we have Indian coaches who are good.
“We must promote Indian coaches who are good. You can grade them and pay them accordingly. Indian coaches too should get compensated adequately. It is fine that a foreign coach gets x amount of dollars but an Indian coach also should earn at least half of that.”
He too feels that respect should be there for the coaches.
Bobby George compares a coach to a creator. He feels they are creative people who keep inventing new methods or models for their wards to follow. He feels coaches are the frontline workers churning out players. “As creative people, we need space and freedom to work,” he tells this daily. “If there are hurdles then it becomes difficult to work creatively. We work in solitude and think about how to improve training and how we can get the best out of an athlete. So we need freedom and timely assistance.” He also believes that as a coach one has to guide the athlete in all their endeavours. "Sometimes I have to support them mentally and sometimes I have to double up as a masseur. And coaching is done on the ground."
For a person who had seen sports in the early 2000s, Robert gives an insight into the transformation over the years. “Things have improved a lot when we used to compete but then a lot of things can get better,” he says and believes that not all foreign coaches are good and it should be need specific. “If an Indian coach is performing they should be rewarded.”
Though Gopichand did not want to go into specifics, he lauded the ministry’s effort to incentivise and grade coaches. “Good to see that SAI has taken a positive step in this direction, especially incentivising coaches,” he said. “It is not Indian versus foreign. It is about capable coaches. If someone is good, it should not matter if he is an Indian or a foreign coach. More than anything, we should develop a system where coaches have more authority and accountability to produce champions.” Gopichand says adding a conducive atmosphere is healthy for players and coaches. And he believes more that it should be a foreign vs Indian coach. "It should be both athlete and need based and whatever is best should be available for the player," he says.
With more top players nearing the end of their careers, there will be a bunch of top players who could start coaching. Indian coaches of course bring that emotional connection with players as well and some coaches feel that if Indian and foreign coaches are at par then an Indian should be given the preference.
Former Commonwealth Games gold medallist pugilist Akhil Kumar, who has an Academy but is tied down with work in Haryana Police, felt that India coaches boxers more intimately. “If the coach is good enough, Indians should be preferred because they know where the player has come from, their diet, their psychology they can connect with them emotionally,” says Akhil. When asked if he would want to coach full-time he says he is not averse to the idea but the atmosphere should be positive. "Not just incentives but one should not be in a position where he or she should be reporting to someone who doesn't know about the sport or coaching," he says. Akhil as a player used to guide his juniors like Jitender Kumar. "As a coach one has to assume multiple roles sometimes as psychologists and sometimes recovery experts."
Foreign connection
The men's hockey team have had a string of foreign coaches, save for the time when they appointed Harendra Singh after Sjoerd Marijne's less than satisfactory time with the side. There are multiple reasons why Hockey India (HI) continues to look outside India's borders, chief among them being the country's coaches still coming up to speed with respect to the top-most coaching standards available (there aren't many who have completed the FIH's gold-standard coaching level). In recent times, they have also delivered with Graham Reid and Craig Fulton delivering Olympic bronze. With respect to the women's team, Marijne's hitherto unheralded charges finished fourth at Tokyo. But Harendra, one of the very few Indian coaches to have earned his stripes, is back with the women's team.
Not just hockey, even athletics do look beyond India. Adille Sumariwalla, an MOC member and former secretary of Athletics Federation of India (AFI) puts it very succinctly. “Athletics is bio-chemistry, bio-mechanics, physiology, etc,” he explains. “We need experts with science background who will be able to understand these for coaches. So when we train coaches we have to train with these in mind. When we are talking about international medals, we need good coaches. It’s a long drawn process to create coaches. In a period of time our coaches will reach there. It is a 10-year process or two Olympic cycle process. I am all for Indian coaches. Right now we have very few people who have both scientific knowledge and experience. That’s why we need foreign coaches. We should have a proper plan to produce these coaches. We have brilliant people but with brilliance we need certain levels of experience. We have to produce thousands of coaches for the process to complete.”
There were other coaches who did not want to be named, but most of them feel it is not an Indian-versus-foreign-coaches issue. It has to be need based. But there should be some kind of parity in the salary structure and respect. Without respect it might be difficult to attract and retain top coaches.