Rashid: Good coach useless if players are not committed
Hendrawan, News, Rashid 4:39 PM
PETALING JAYA: Having a good coach provides the boost to the players. But national singles chief coach Rashid Sidek also felt that the shuttlers themselves need to show firm commitment, in the first place.
The Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) announced on Monday that they had hired Indonesia’s former world champion Hendrawan to help improve the standard of the national singles players.
Added boost: Indonesia's Hendrawan signed a two-year contract to coach the singles players. The 37-year-old Hendrawan signed a two-year contract with the BAM after the conclusion of Indonesia’s campaign in the Sudirman Cup world mixed team championships in Guangzhou last week.
He will work with Rashid to help in the coaching of the national elite back-up and back-up singles shuttlers.
Rashid is all for the appointment of Hendrawan but he also hoped to see the shuttlers show better commitment.
“If they do not show the commitment themselves, how can we help them to improve? You can have the best coach in the world but if the player is not committed to the programme, it is hard to make headway,” said Rashid yesterday.
“This is partly why there is a big gap in standard between Lee Chong Wei and the rest of the singles players in the national set-up.
“Our players can consider themselves lucky as they do not have to go far for inspiration. We have the world No. 1 in Chong Wei and his commitment to the game is the reason for him being able to get to the top.
“In my playing days, we do not even have full support facilities enjoyed by the team today. And I also went through one of the toughest coach in the world (Fang Kaixiang). I do not think most of the current players can stomach the training we had to endure.”
Rashid showed the firm side recently by excluding all the singles players from the Singapore Open next month except for Chong Wei and Tan Chun Seang.
“It is a good thing for our current batch of singles players to learn from another foreign coach. He may have a different approach to training,” he said.
On how he plans to divide the workload, Rashid said that he was leaving it to the management.
Hendrawan is the third reputable Indonesian to be part of a team to chart the fortunes of Malaysian badminton.
Rexy Mainaky is the current chief coach of the doubles players while Indra Gunawan was the singles coach of the Malaysian men’s team in 2001 and 2002.
Posted by Lucas Liau
on 4:39 PM.
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