Hockey: Shivendra Singh-coached India A ‘got to play vs best teams’ in Craig Fulton’s bid to create large pool for busy year

Rajgir: The Indian men’s hockey team has a hectic schedule ahead of them next year, with the Hockey India League happening in January, then the FIH Pro League and the World Cup and the Asian Games taking place in a span of mere three weeks.Keeping this in mind, men's team head coach Craig Fulton started to build an India A team from last year itself which will help him pick his squads from a large pool of players during the two major tournaments happening back-to-back.In order to prepare them well, he took them on an European tour last year and this year, too, they went to Europe in July and played eight matches against Ireland, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands where Shivendra Singh was their head coach.Shivendra believes this tour had a huge impact on the players. It was a great experience for him as well since it was the first time that he was in charge of the side as the head coach.Asked what the experience was like, Shivendra said, “The Indian team got to play against the best teams. So the players got an idea what it is like to play against the top teams in the world. They also understood how the changes are made, how fast and how different it is.”As far as the focus is concerned, it was on educating and giving confidence to the players but the biggest benefactors were the two goalkeepers – Pawan and Mohit HS.“They had the freedom to make their own decisions. Besides some players like Sanjay, Varun, Vishnu and Karthi — with some experience with the senior side — there were no seniors to guide them and as a result they had to take more responsibility,” the coach added.“They also had to guide the players from the back, maintain the structure of the team and focus on marking, calling and communication with the players. The other big experience was that they had the chance to face off against quality drag-flickers like Jip Jansen and facing them gave them a huge confidence boost.”It was also a major exposure for Sanjay, who captained the side. “You get settled down by playing with the seniors and playing to their directions. However, there he had to guide the side and the two young goalkeepers and share his experience among them,” Shivendra said.Some of these players also got a chance to travel to Australia, along with the Indian senior team, and played a couple of matches there. However, it was strange to see them not make the squad for the Asia Cup.In Fulton’s opinion, though, “It was not a wise move to expose younger players in a qualifying tournament.” But he wants to keep working with the group throughout the year and give them as much game time in the upcoming tournament.“We have a year to keep building the same group that we took to Australia because they are our younger group coming through and then we’ll keep them in the system and give them games through the Pro League and then obviously we have some talented under-21s coming through after the Junior World cup and then bring them into a bigger squad,” Fulton said ahead of the tournament.Hopefully, this will help him get what he had planned to achieve a year ago and eventually help India perform well at the World Cup and the Asian Games, too.