Arvind Bhat comment on Badminton coaching trains light on need to focus on coach education

Arvind Bhat, a former World No. 22 badminton player who has taken up coaching, may have stirred the proverbial Hornet’s nest. By saying that the absence of great coaches is the reason for the next generation of players not stepping up, he has candidly drawn attention to the state of coaching in Indian badminton in particular and Indian sport in general. 

“Juniors are not getting the extra push, because no coach is taking complete responsibility and telling players ‘I will make you a World champion’,” he told The Indian Express in a free-flowing interview published on Tuesday. “The class of coaches is simply not there in the way he (Pullela Gopichand) in the way he coached and the benchmark he set.”

Clearly, if India wants to catapult itself to the world’s best sporting nations, it  must pay more attention to coach development. All stakeholders will have to identify their own roles and play them to the hilt and in unison so that this piece of the jigsaw does not go missing or is wrongly placed. India will then have taken the steps that can hasten its evolution as a sporting nation.

There are many former athletes who imbibe coaching skills from their own coaches and board the bandwagon. But not every athlete who has played and even done well at the highest level can be an effective coach, suggesting that coach education can assist them in understanding some aspects of the job that may not be apparent to them during their playing days.

India cricketer WV Raman, a redoubtable thinker of the game and coach, quickly points out that since coaching calls for different skill sets to playing, undergoing coach education is important. “I understood that transition to a coaching role is never easy for a player and hence undertook a coaching programme in the Australian Cricket Academy in the year 2000,” he said.

“Since you take on an enormous responsibility as coach, you must ensure that you don’t mess up the future of cricketers. One way is to have an open mind and be willing to learn even when  you engage in teaching,” he said. “It is incumbent on you as coach to decide how you teach each class differently based on its needs. You cannot be a one-trick pony but must be flexible.” 

There is another aspect that Badminton star Parupalli Kashyap, who was men’s singles World No. 6, brought up. He told The Hindu recently that Indian coaches do not have incentives to continue because foreign coaches get paid 10 to 15 times more money than Indians. “The josh is there but I do not how long it will last if I don’t see any incentive to continue,” he said.

A week or so back, Athletics Federation of India President Adille J. Sumariwalla spoke in an interview to NNIS about some coaches’ mindset. “It is an old problem, our coaches not letting their trainees seek evolution by moving to others. They do not understand the importance of letting talent they have worked with to grow under coaches who are better equipped,” he said.

We have often heard foreign coaches of national teams across disciplines lament that they have had to make error-correction in athletes who had learnt faulty techniques. And it is an accepted fact that dismantling muscle memory and instilling new ones is well neigh a tall order. The sportspersons’ reluctance to risk making technical changes add to the challenges.

It is clear that India has paid little attention to ensuring that the basics are taught right. That raises fundamental questions if the coaches at the grassroots level and physical education teachers who double up as coaches in schools have developed the capacity to impact the basic lessons right. 

It makes us wonder if the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala can do a better job of imparting coach education. It has been 63 years since it was established to train coaches across disciplines. Thousands have emerged from its portals with coaching diplomas against their names but how many have actually contributed to India’s growth as a sports nation?

Besides not being able to attract many former internationals to pick up fundamental lessons in the coaching, it has not quite emerged as a premier educational institution whose alumni are sought after. While some secured apt jobs, many have had to find their own ways, establishing independent practice with focus on quantity rather than quality of trainees.

With few avenues of employment, the swelling pool of NIS coaches – there are six weeks certification courses also that the Institute now offers – it is understandable that many start their own academies and seek comfort in numbers. Without an apparent and immediate role in the assembly line leading to Olympic Games, there is no buy-in to the country’s larger goal.

Unless educational institutions engage qualified sports coaches, the quality of talent emerging from the school sports is unlikely to be very strong. Of course, there are some schools that engage trained sports coaches in some disciplines to work with their students but, by and large, schools leave it to Physical Education Teachers to double up as sports coaches.

Undoubtedly, coach development must keep pace with the evolution of sport around the world and not cocooned in the past. By all accounts, it needs more than a fresh coat of paint. It requires a whole new structure, one that will encourage coaches to be not only aware of their own skill sets but also learn to find joy in training the level of athletes they are equipped to coach.

Many years ago, realising that cricket coach education needed massive upgradation, the Board of Control for Cricket in India set up the National Cricket Academy and introduced four levels of certification programmes. It devised the courses with inputs from Australian legend Rodney Marsh who teamed up with Hanumant Singh and Vasu Paranjpe. 

Some National Federations are now bringing international coach education to the country, but it will take time for the results to show up in terms of athlete performances shaped by such coaches. Some Non-Government Organisations chip in with their own efforts to enhance the knowledgebase of coaches whose athletes they support.

Yet, if coaches who have done the hard yards are overlooked in favour of others who have not invested in their own transition from player to coach but learn on the fly, the message that goes out to the lot that spends time and energy in acquiring new skill sets is not the best. It is imperative that powers-that-be do not discourage many from embracing coach education. 

Coach development pathways will take time to evolve and produce results. That demands investments in patience which is in short supply. The system finds it easier to invest a few crore rupees in a foreign coach who can take an athlete or a team to do well on the global stage. Some call it the band-aid method, but it serves the optics of those who make these decisions.