There needs to be more incentives for top players to participate in the Senior Nationals: Gopi Chand

Chief National coach P. Gopi Chand emphasizes the need for more incentives to boost participation in Senior Nationals.

Chief National coach P. Gopi Chand stated that there needed to be more incentives for the nation’s top players to participate in the Senior Nationals.

“It is always a challenge when athletes have to play two circuits, international and national, or national and state,” he said here on Sunday. “Time for off-season or a training block becomes very limited. Ideally, there should be one calendar, not two.

“A three-day Nationals, with the top-eight participating, could change things. But in some states, national participation gives you a job somewhere or a university seat. Aligning all these interests needs considerable debate”.

Gopi Chand felt that making it mandatory would not be fool-proof. “Players may just come, lose a match and walk off. That’s not the purpose. Either the prize money needs to be motivating or certain other things [have to be].

“It has to be across the board. If you are a junior national champion, what you get today is very debatable. Do you get to be part of the national squad? Do you get entries into every junior tournament that the country sends players to? That’s not happening. You still have to play selection trials. There are blurred lines everywhere”.

Even as he praised India’s talent pool, the 51-year-old raised concerns about the nation’s coaching capacity.

“We’ve grown like Bangalore City, right? Very fast and then you are trying to figure out where the drainage has to go,” he said, eliciting many a smile. “How do you produce and motivate the next bunch of coaches? I could have said this six years back too, and that’s a big cause of concern because in this period we have not converted that talent into results.