India kick off busy European leg with Dutch test
The Indian men's hockey team will be back in action after more than three months and face off against Olympic champions The Netherlands in the FIH Pro League at Wagener Hockey Stadium in Amstelveen, the Netherlands, on Saturday.
It will be a tough test for
Harmanpreet Singh
& Co as they will be playing the first six matches of this leg of the tournament over a span of just nine days.
India will begin their campaign with two matches against the Dutch with a rest day in between. After another rest day, they will play a double header against Argentina. They will then travel to Antwerp, Belgium — about two-and-a-half hours away from Amstelveen — during the rest day, and play another double header against Australia.
It's only after that they will get a four-day break following which they will play world champions Belgium twice.
Keeping this in mind, head coach Craig Fulton and scientific advisor Alan Tan have worked with the players to get their fitness up to their optimum level over the past few months. And that has involved lots of endurance training, like running up hills or on the tracks and working in the gym.
Speaking about it, the coach said on Friday, "I think everything we were pushing for was around being physically conditioned to play against the best teams in the world, starting off with the Netherlands and to be nice and physically ready for them.
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That was the whole reason behind pushing as hard as we have. And yeah, we'll see where and how we go tomorrow (Saturday)."
However, the great news for the team is that Harmanpreet, who suffered an injury during the Pro League in Bhubaneswar and missed three of the eight matches, is back to full fitness after undergoing rehabilitation and recovery and looked in good spirits ahead of the European leg of the tournament.
Besides fitness, the coach has focused on the other areas of the game as well as he said, "it doesn't help running and not being able to convert".
"We've been working a lot on different structures — defensive structures and attacking shapes. So we want to see that come out (in their play). And obviously, we have different opponents, so we have different plans against different teams and we want to try and execute as we go," added Fulton during a virtual press conference.
It's going to be challenging but the coach is looking forward to helping the team finish on top of the podium — something that India have failed to do so far — and qualify for the 2026 World Cup to be held in Belgium and the Netherlands.
In order to do that, Fulton not only has pushed the players during the training sessions but also made them play three practice matches against Ireland in Dublin — of which they lost one and won two. The coach also made the team watch a rugby game — a first for many of the players — which he believes will help the players a bit more "physically".
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