Before embarking on their trip to Spain for a four-nation international tournament, the Indian men’s hockey team had a few sessions with newly-appointed mental conditioning expert Paddy Upton and both chief coach Craig Fulton and captain Harmanpreet Singh described it as a “discovery phase” for both parties.
Harman said that besides getting to know the players and Indian hockey, Upton has started looking into one aspect of the mind process that players have to tackle regularly — the change in attitude the players feel while playing a lower-ranked team as against one ranked higher.
“Usually when we play a team that is ranked higher than us, is a tough opponent, we are pepped up, know what it has to do and each player knows his responsibilities. But when playing against a lower-ranked team or weak team, the mind starts taking things easily. Paddy gave some examples of how to tackle that,” said Harmanpreet Singh during a virtual interaction with the media from Bengaluru on Friday.
He said one of the examples that Upton gave them was about playing a team like Australia.
“He said winning a match against Australia does not mean that you have conquered the world. Just like your performance can’t be the same each and every day, but you should have consistency. He told us about getting out of that mental state,” Harmanpreet said.
Coach Fulton, who took over the reins of the Indian men’s team just a few weeks ago, said he was happy to have Upton as a sounding board as he goes about implementing his ideas of a ‘new Indian way’ of playing.
While giving credit to his predecessor Graham Reid, who guided India to a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 and among the top five in the FIH World Rankings, Fulton said that his process is to bridge the gap between actual and perceived ambitions.
“It’s a discovery phase, we are on a real trajectory. The work previously done by Graham put the team on the map with consistent performance with one or two disappointments on the way. Now we are trying to keep that trajectory, but then how do we improve what has already been done and that starts individually before it goes collectively,” he said.
Fulton has already explained to the players his philosophy of defensive hockey but also wants the team to be “fluid upfront”.
While he helps the team discover the ‘new Indian way’ of playing, the 48-year-old former South Africa player wants the players to discover their voice with Upton’s help.
“Paddy is not going to be the main voice in the team. We will help the team find its own voice. We don’t want anyone standing and giving instruction and when the persons are not there the team can’t function.”
He said he has made some changes to the squad for the upcoming tour of Spain to test some players that he could not check out in the FIH Pro League.
The coach said he could not give chances to some players in the core group because of the limitations of the squad numbers but said a few more players will join the squad for the Asian Champions Trophy to be played in Chennai.
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