David John named interim Indian Hockey coach in the place of sacked Roelant Oltmans

Oltmans joined the list of foreign coaches who sacked by Hockey India. In 2013, he was initially appointed as the High-Performance director and later he started to give his services as a head coach when his compatriot Paul Van Ass left controversially in 2015.

A high-profile meeting held in Delhi where several top Indian players participated. Over twenty-four members featured including Harbinder Singh, B.P Govinda, V. Baskaran, Thoiba Singh, Dr. A.B. Subbaiah, Dr. R.P Singh, Joydeep Kaur, Sardar Singh, P.R Sreejesh, Manpreet Singh, Roelant Oltmans, Jugraj Singh, Arjun Halappa, Hans Streeder, Scott Conway, David John, Elena Norman, Mariamma Koshy, Md. Mushtaque Ahmad, Rajinder Singh, Tapan Das, Bhola Nath Singh, Firoz Ansari, and Gyanendro Ningombam. They reviewed India’s performance in 2016-17 and decided to end the Oltmans' stint on Saturday.

“To make results a reality, we need to make hard decisions for the greater good of the future of hockey in India. The current format of coaching was not showing results beyond a certain level,” said Harbinder Singh, the chairman of Hockey India’s selection committee, at the end of the meeting as reported by Hindustan Times.

Under Oltmans guidance, India won the silver and bronze in back-to-back editions of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup respectively. Also, he guided India to Asian Champions Trophy gold last year. This big decision indicated that the management is aiming for medals at tournaments like World League finals and Tokyo 2020. 

“Asia can’t be a benchmark for success anymore. We need to show results beyond intent in key international tournaments where the sporadic success over the last two years is more incidental than deliberate,” said Harbinder.