{"id":4491,"date":"2023-08-08T19:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T13:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/?p=4491"},"modified":"2023-08-08T19:03:57","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T13:33:57","slug":"asian-champions-trophy-hockey-india-beat-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/?p=4491","title":{"rendered":"Asian Champions trophy Hockey, India Beat Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Prathik Rathi<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Indian hockey team players celebrate a goal against Korea in the Asian Champions Trophy.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To say the Asian Champions Trophy has been gruelling on players would be a massive understatement. In what is a second summer in Chennai, where afternoon temperatures have been touching 40 degree Celsius in certain<\/p>\n\n\n\n

pockets, it has tested the players to the core. With humidity too on the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

higher side and breeze non-existent, teams have been struggling to maintain intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such extreme conditions, just weeks ahead of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Korea have endured three back-to-back 4:15 pm starts. Malaysia, who played the late evening game against India, which they lost 0-5, had only a 16-hour turnaround before they faced Japan in Monday\u2019s \ufb01rst game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In comparison, hosts India have had the luxury of not just playing all their matches at 8:15 pm, in the company of a slight breeze, but have also got enough recovery time for their players. By every passing outing, it is<\/p>\n\n\n\n

becoming increasingly visible that India, as head coach Craig Fulton<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mentioned, are peaking in terms of their \ufb01tness and intensity levels as they defeated Korea 3-2 in their fourth league match at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a team that is learning to \ufb01t into Fulton\u2019s tactics, they couldn\u2019t have asked for a more favourable scheduling. After choosing to use the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

tournament as a dress rehearsal for the Asian Games, India are not wasting the opportunity. As mid\ufb01elder Nilakanta Sharma had mentioned, during the Four- Nation event in Barcelona last month, the team appeared<\/p>\n\n\n\n

puzzled at times, with mid\ufb01elders especially caught in no-man\u2019s land as they were yet to fully embrace Fulton\u2019s defence-\ufb01rst approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While defending is Fulton\u2019s \ufb01rst priority, the core of his coaching style is<\/p>\n\n\n\n

built on the mid\ufb01elders. When India go forward, the defensive mid\ufb01elders are supposed to don the hat of an attacking mid\ufb01elder and when the opponents have the ball, the attacking mid\ufb01elders have to turn into DMs. Having allotted dual roles to each player, and taken out the full-press that India were so used to under Fulton\u2019s predecessor Graham Reid, they are now beginning to get used to this new style of play. Instead of pressing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hard when the opponents have the ball, they get to positions where they can close down the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, they are far from being in the right positions at all times, like the occasion when they let Kim Sunghyon score by providing him acres of<\/p>\n\n\n\n

space to shoot. Even towards the end of the match, there were some nervy moments, with the mid\ufb01elders appearing out of position as Korea picked<\/p>\n\n\n\n

up pace, only for their \ufb01nishing to be erroneous. Jihun Yang pulld one back in the 58th minute, but they fell short in the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having got off the mark through Nilakanta\u2019s goal when he guided the ball home from close range. The second, which helped India take the lead for<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the second time came via a penalty corner, with Mandeep Singh getting on the scoresheet. It was an evening when India converted just one of the four penalty corners they earned. The captain also missed a penalty stroke in the \ufb01nal quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mandeep Singh scored the third, this one a nicely-constructed \ufb01eld goal which raised prospects of another big Indian win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prathik Rathi To say the Asian Champions Trophy has been gruelling on players would be a massive understatement. In what is a second summer in Chennai, where afternoon temperatures have been touching 40 degree Celsius in certain pockets, it has tested the players to the core. With humidity too on the higher side and breeze […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/20230808_185203.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4494,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions\/4494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rnalive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}