Craig Fulton eyes gold as India begin hockey title defence at Asian Games 2026

The Indian men’s team looks to create history by defending its Asian Games gold medal in Japan

With the Asian Games 2026 fast approaching, the Indian men’s hockey team has turned its attention firmly towards Japan.

After a difficult FIH Hockey World Cup campaign that saw India finish eighth, the Harmanpreet Singh-led side will now seek to regroup and defend its Asian Games crown—while also chasing the added prize of direct qualification for the LA 2028 Olympics.

Already in Japan, India is putting the finishing touches to its preparations ahead of Sunday’s opening clash against Indonesia. Amid the team’s busy build-up, head coach Craig Fulton spoke about the side’s preparations, mindset and approach as it prepares for 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.

Related: Asian Games 2026 – Sjoerd Marijne wants India women’s hockey to ‘fight’ for historic gold

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 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 the 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 one game at a time, and we’ve got all our focus on ourselves, not really worrying about anyone else. We want to try to top our pool, and that is our first goal.

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