Hockey coach Fulton seeks ''fresh perspective'' for Olympics preparation

Hockey India on Tuesday named a 39-member core group of players for the men's national camp to prepare for the upcoming five-nation tournament in Spain, even as head coach Craig Fulton seeks a "fresh perspective" for next year's Paris Olympics.

The Indian men's hockey team, which qualified directly for Paris Olympics after winning the gold medal in the Hangzhou Asian Games, will feature in the five-nation tournament in Valencia starting from December 15.

World champions Germany, France, Belgium and the hosts Spain are the other teams in the tournament.

The men's national coaching camp begins at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Centre in Bengaluru from Wednesday.

It was a long break from national camp after a successful outing in the Hangzhou Asian Games. Most of the players from the team played the National Championship in Chennai, and I too got a chance to watch some of the young and upcoming players closely," Fulton said.

"We will now assemble in SAI, Bengaluru, with a fresh perspective to our preparations for the Paris Olympics.

As I have maintained, it is a process and we will revisit our Asian Games campaign and understand how we can do better as a team and work towards that, Fulton added.

The core group for the national camp has all the 18 players that won gold in the Asian Games last month.

Team captain Harmanpreet Singh said, The past few weeks were great, as we got to spend quality time with family and also had a great outing playing for our home state at the National Championship in Chennai. Now, we return to the camp yearning to be a better team."

List of players in the core-probable group:

Goalkeepers: Krishan Bahadur Pathak, Sreejesh Parattu Raveendran, Suraj Karkera, Pawan, Prashant Kumar Chauhan.

Defenders: Jarmanpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Harmanpreet Singh, Varun Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Gurinder Singh, Jugraj Singh, Mandeep Mor, Nilam Sanjeep Xess, Sanjay, Yashdeep Siwach, Dipsan Tirkey, Manjeet.

Midfielders: Manpreet Singh, Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Moirangthem Rabichandra Singh, Shamsher Singh, Nilakanta Sharma, Rajkumar Pal, Sumit, Akashdeep Singh, Gurjant Singh, Mohd Raheel Mouseen, Maninder Singh.

Forwards: S Karthi, Mandeep Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Abhishek, Dilpreet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh, Simranjeet Singh, Shilanand Lakra, Pawan Rajbhar.