Fulton Warns India: Forget the 8-0, Tonight’s Semifinal Is a Different Game
India beat Korea 8-0 on Monday. Tonight they play them again, and Craig Fulton wants nobody thinking about Monday. The India coach has warned his side against complacency ahead of the Asian Champions Trophy semifinal in Mohali at 7 p.m. IST (6:30 p.m. PKT), saying a semifinal carries a different kind of pressure. He’s right, and every hockey fan knows why: knockout games have a habit of ignoring league tables.
The numbers say India should stroll it. Five wins from five, 34 goals scored, five conceded, defending champions, playing at home. Captain Harmanpreet Singh leads the tournament scoring with nine goals. Sukhjeet Singh and Dilpreet Singh have four each. And then there’s the precedent from September, when India beat these same opponents 8-2 at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, their biggest ever win over Korea at the Games. On paper, this is a mismatch.
But semifinals aren’t played on paper, and India have one genuine worry. Abhishek, who has scored three goals in three games at this tournament, twisted his ankle around Sunday’s 4-2 win over Malaysia and missed the Korea game. Fulton has described his availability as touch and go, and the forward was due to be reassessed on Tuesday. No confirmed outcome of that reassessment had surfaced by this run, so his status for tonight stays exactly where Fulton left it: uncertain. India coped without him on Monday, with Hardik Singh rested too, and the depth is real. Still, you’d rather have a three-goal forward available than not.
Korea, for their part, finished fourth on six points and have nothing to lose. They already know what India can do to them, and they know the one thing that changes tonight: lose and you’re playing for bronze on Thursday, win and you’re in the final against Japan or Malaysia. That’s a freer head than the one they carried into Monday.
India are chasing a seventh Asian Champions Trophy final. The favourites tag is theirs, and it’s deserved. Fulton’s message is just the other half of the job: act like it isn’t.
