Harpal Singh Bedi / Bhubaneswar

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) on Sunday officially reprimanded India’s chief coach Harendra Singh for his vitriolic outburst against on-field umpires after the hosts lost to Netherlands in the hockey World Cup here.

The reprimand was handed to Harendra after he and India’s analytical coach Chris Ciriello were called for an official hearing by the FIH on Saturday.

India lost 1-2 to Netherlands in the fourth and last quarterfinal to crash out of the tournament on Thursday. Soon after the defeat, Harendra lashed out the umpires squarely blaming them for India’s loss.

He went on to say that it was time for the FIH to seriously address the issue (umpiring) as his side(India) has been on the receiving end of poor on-field decisions twice this year.

However his fiery outburst didn’t go down well with the FIH with its technical delegate Christian Deckenbrock who termed the coach’s outburst as “inappropriate” and “unacceptable”.

“The FIH Technical Delegate has decided that India’s coach Harendra Singh committed a breach of the Code of Conduct (Level 1.2.k: Public criticism of, or inappropriate public comment in relation to an incident at the press conference following the match between India vs Netherlands,” the FIH said in a statement on Sunday.

“As of result of this breach, Harendra Singh received an official reprimand. The FIH Technical delegate asserted that the statements from the coach at the press conference regarding umpires were unacceptable.

This reprimand means that Indian coach has to be very careful in his utterances regarding the umpires or other FIH officials or he will face serious consequences.

The FIH made it clear that this official reprimand will be recorded by the FIH and can be taken into account if Harendra breaches the Code of Conduct again at a future event.