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Players were not mentally tough, says Bhaskaran

Indian hockey coach Vasudevan Bhaskaran says umpiring is not to be blamed for the team's loss to South Africa in the recent overseas Test series.

''Critics say whenever we lose we blame umpiring. But this time I will not blame the South African umpires,'' he said.

He, however, did feel that the umpiring was bad in some matches. ''It was good in some others, and best in the last Test which was telecast live,'' Bhaskaran told Sportstime, a daily sports programme on news and current affairs channel, on Doordarshan.

Bhaskaran said the Indian team was better and stronger than South Africa but lost out on ''their man-to-man marking of our forwards''.

India lost the five-match series 3-0 after drawing two matches.

He said India could have won at least three matches, where it had leads of 2-0, "but the players were not mentally tough over the full 70 minutes".

''We gave away many loose balls in our half. In modern hockey it sureshot leads to defeat,'' he said.

Bhaskaran, however, said many of these faults will be corrected in the forthcoming camp. He said it is wrong to say that there is no money in modern hockey. ''The problem is we compare hockey with cricket and feel discontented all the time.''

When asked whether he missed the top six players, Bhaskaran replied: ''I do not call them the top six players. It is for the media to keep calling them so. They are good but if they cannot get along with the game and the federation, we should not keep talking about them.''

When pointed out that they had proved themselves, he said ''Everybody proves themselves. Other players are also proving themselves.''

UNI