NEW DELHI: The next two months will be the most important period for the Indian hockey team until the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. With the World Cup (August 15-30) and Asian Games (September 19-October 4) slated together, Harmanpreet Singh and Co are in for a hectic and tough time.
But at the helm, chief coach Craig Fulton will be the one controlling the entire show. He is not just eyeing India’s first World Cup medal in 51 years but is also aiming to maintain India’s status as the undisputed No.1 in Asia.
HT caught up with the 51-year-old South African to discuss India’s preparation and the new World Cup format among other topics. Excerpts:
How difficult will it be to manage workload with barely any time between the World Cup and Asian Games?
There’s enough time between the two tournaments. If we set our sights only on the World Cup, we lose focus on the Asian Games. If we focus only on the Asian Games, the World Cup team becomes depleted. So we’re putting all our eggs into both of them individually. There are 19 days between the end of the World Cup and the start of the Asian Games. We’ll have a break for a week and then head out with two weeks before the start of the tournament.
Many players said that since they’ve won Asian Games gold but haven’t medalled at the World Cup since 1975, they are taking the latter more seriously. What’s your take?
It’s been 51 years since India last won the World Cup (1975). The highest India’s finished since then has been fifth. It’s not an easy tournament just because of its nature. A lot of top teams do very well in it because it’s a massive focus for them. At the same time the Asian Games is our qualifier for LA. If you said to the European teams that they play the World Cup and within 19 days they’re playing the LA qualifier, they’d laugh at you. They would not accept it. However, we’ve known about this situation for a while so we planned with the India A team and created more depth.
The FIH has introduced a second round robin at this World Cup. How do you view the new format?
Belgium (the hosts) really wanted to change the format to avoid the quarter-final stage, which presents a different challenge. You have to really do well in your initial pool so the points you take through are really important if you can top your own group. If you can’t, at least try and draw because then you take points through to the second round. You don’t play that opposition that you go through with but you keep those points and then you play the other top two teams in the other pool that you go into. It’s different but it’s the same in a sense that you’re playing a World Cup where you’ve got to play your best hockey when it counts and it’s results based for you to try and get into, one, into the second round and, two, into the top four.
India have been grouped with England, Pakistan and Wales…
We have no problem with our draw. We know that Pakistan is not an easy game. You look back at the results, fine, but at the same time it’s 100% effort every single time. England is not an easy opposition. They have a very experienced team and have come close in the last two World Cups to trying to get onto the podium. India doesn’t have a strong history of doing well in the World Cup so we picked our most experienced group with some youth which is exciting.
You’ve selected a tried and tested squad but dropped Raj Kumar Pal and Krishan Pathak…
It’s always tough to have a deselection. Sometimes when you play No.2 for so long it doesn’t help you because you get used to playing in that position. When the No.1 position becomes available, you have to play No.1 but you haven’t played No.1 for the last 5-6 years. It is a transition phase. We’ve had the same keepers for quite some time. We’ve done okay but if I wanted to bring another keeper in, I needed to expose another keeper and really give them an opportunity to gain some experience in tournaments. And Mohith (HS) took his chance also from a shootout point of view. We have 3-5 good keepers now training and if we stay with the tried and tested, I don’t know what our ceiling is if we can go past that. So I’m looking at other options and Mohith has done well in training and matches. He’s still young but we also need to get him experienced and that’s why he got games in the Pro League and also got a full game against Germany which was difficult but at the same time as a young keeper it’s going to be difficult. But we have to back them.
India is the undisputed No.1 in Asia. We don’t expect India to lose to Asian opponents. Does that bring extra pressure?
Asian Games is a massive tournament for us. When I first arrived, the very first goal was to address the inconsistency of India qualifying through the Asian Games because they hadn’t won it for two cycles. Now we have won it once and now we have a second cycle, this is in year four. So that’s a real focus for us and being the indisputable No. 1 in Asia is important because of the qualifying tournaments and then all the other opportunities you get against Asian opposition that advance to world tournaments like the Olympics or World Cup.
