As the Indian men’s hockey team resumes international duties with its opening game of the European leg of the FIH Pro League against the Netherlands on Saturday, coach Craig Fulton will be looking to achieve several goals over the next 20 days.
While the team’s primary objective will be to finish on the podium and secure World Cup qualification, two big-ticket events in 2026 – the World Cup and the Asian Games – mean the current set of matches will also be important to identify the core of the Indian team and fine-tune gameplay and training plans.
India men’s hockey coach Craig Fulton
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
India men’s hockey coach Craig Fulton
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
“This (Pro League) is one of the ways of securing qualification for the World Cup, so we are definitely putting that as a priority. Obviously, if it doesn’t work out, we have the Asia Cup in August, but we’ve been training well for this. We really want to try and finish as high as we possibly can and get on the podium,” Fulton said during a pre-match interaction on Friday.
India is currently third on the table with 15 points from eight games at home, one behind England and Belgium. However, the European leg will be a challenge, both in terms of the opposition and acclimatisation.
“We have six games in nine days and have to travel from Amsterdam to Antwerp, which is 2 1/2 hours, and then play the next day. Everything is geared towards being physically able to cope with the load. We have four days off after the sixth game, then we play Belgium in back-to-back matches. Everything we were pushing for was around being physically conditioned to play the best teams in the world.
“We’ve played some top teams already — Spain, Germany, England, Ireland — and now in Europe, we’ve got plans for all the teams that are coming up. We are realistically going to go one game at a time, try to get maximum points out of every game, not looking too far ahead. We have 24 players to keep the squad fresh to get through all eight games,” Fulton admitted.
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The main target, he insisted, was to constantly improve. “The last time we played international hockey was in February, so we have a nice challenge playing Holland first. We want to get up to speed quickly tactically, convert our PCs and field goals. We want to make sure we’re good structurally – we’ve been working on a lot of different structures, both defensive and attacking shape.”
Captain Harmanpreet Singh, who was at less than optimum fitness both during the Hockey India League and the India leg of the Pro League due to ankle and wrist injuries, insisted he was fully recovered and was looking forward to the challenge. The team’s main drag-flicker, Harmanpreet, also reiterated that there was no performance pressure and there were others to share his workload in the PC department.
“The more drag-flickers we have in the team the better. Jugraj Singh has been doing well and I am confident he will convert the chances we get here. But we also have others –- Amit (Rohidas), Sanjay, Rajinder, Neelam (Xess) –- and I hope whoever gets the chance will ensure we maintain the scoreboard pressure.
“We scored more field goals than PCs in the previous leg. The main thing is to maintain a balance between the two with the ultimate target being scoring. We try to get at least two PCs per quarter. Hopefully, we will see a lot of scoring both ways, play smart hockey,” he said.
