New Delhi, 17 September 2026: The Asian Games 2026 are around the corner, and the Indian men’s hockey team has turned the page, shifting its focus firmly towards Japan. Following a challenging FIH Hockey World Cup campaign where India finished eighth, the team will now look to regroup and defend its Asian Games gold medal — a title that also carries the added significance of securing direct qualification to the LA 2028 Olympics.
Already in Japan, the Harmanpreet Singh-led side is fine-tuning its preparations ahead of Sunday’s opening match against Indonesia. Amid a busy schedule, Chief Coach Craig Fulton took time out to shed light on the team’s preparations, mindset and approach to the challenge ahead.
How has it been since flying out from India for the Asian Games with a stopover at Mount Fuji for a bonding camp?
We didn’t have much time between the World Cup and the Asian Games, but we are really excited to get going again. I think starting it with a difficult but very, very enlightening experience where you go to a different part of the world (Mount Fuji) where we’ve not all been together before and experience something like that, it just helps the guys really focus on the team and not just the individual pursuit. That’s exactly what we’re trying to improve and enhance.
Has the Mount Fuji experience helped the team regroup after the tough World Cup outing?
Well, you see, the bottom line is that we’re very, very privileged to do what we do; and it’s the gratitude for having this opportunity. (Regarding) what happened during the World Cup, we have identified what we need to focus on more coming into this tournament (Asian Games). We’re able to go straight into it and focus on those improvements and then do it as a team. Raj (Kumar Pal) comes in, Addy (Aditya Arjun Lalage) goes out, and here we are starting a new tournament on Sunday.
We obviously had much higher ambitions than finishing 8th at the FIH World Cup. What has been your talk with the group in order to put that result behind you?
These are lessons, and the only way to treat them as lessons learned is to turn that learning into action. That’s what we’ve got to do now. We’ve discussed everything, gone through everything and highlighted areas needing improvement. At the same time, it’s now about action after all the training we’re doing as we line up for our first game on Sunday.
Often, the pool stage in the Asian Games is looked at as one-sided games. How difficult is it to build the tempo in such matches and then peak in the all-important knockout phase?
All respect to whoever we play. The only way to truly respect the opposition is by giving 100%. That’s what we’ve done, and that’s what we’ll continue to do in all the tournaments. So, you can expect the same, for sure.
How do you think the last Asian Games are different from this one – adding the fact that we can create history by defending our gold medal, which hasn’t happened before in Indian hockey’s history?
I think it’s very different. It’s still the Asian Games, but it’s just a totally different context because we had Asian Champions Trophy in India before we played the last Asian Games (in 2023). So, we had played all those Asian teams before we played the Asian Games. Now we’ve played the World Cup before the Asian Games. But it doesn’t really change anything. We take it as one game at a time, and we’ve got all our focus on ourselves, not really worrying about anyone else. We want to try and top our pool, and that is our first goal.
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