India hires foreign drag flicking and goalkeeping coaches for Hockey World Cup

Hosts India will undergo a week-long specialised dragflick and goalkeeping camp from Wednesday at the SAI Centre in Bengaluru as part of their preparation for next month's FIH men's World Cup.

The camp, to conclude on December 20, will be held under the watchful eyes of double Olympic champion from Netherlands Bram Lomans and Dennis Van De Pol.

While Lomans will work with the Indian dragflickers, his countrymate Van De Pol will fine-tune the goalkeepers ahead of the game's showpiece to be held in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela from January 13 to 29.

The specialised camp will be a part of the two-week long national coaching camp, which started on Monday.

The national camp will be attended by 33 core probables.

"We are grateful to Hockey India and SAI for organising this special dragflick and goalkeeping camp ahead of the World Cup. This is a great opportunity to get world class specialised coaching and it will certainly help provide the right tools and strategies for our dragflickers and goalies," Indian chief coach Graham Reid said in a release.

"This is going to be an important camp for us. There are a few critical aspects of our game that needs some improvement on the basis of the assessment of Australia tour.

"The players were given one week's break after returning from Adelaide and I believe they will be physically and mentally fresh when they report for the camp," added Reid.

India will leave on December 27 for Rourkela, where they will begin their World Cup campaign against England on January 13.

Core probable group for World Cup: Krishan Bahadur Pathak, PR Sreejesh, Suraj Karkera, Jarmanpreet Singh, Surender Kumar, Harmanpreet Singh, Varun Kumar, Amit Rohidas, Gurinder Singh, Jugraj Singh, Mandeep Mor, Nilam Sanjeep Xess, Sanjay, Yashdeep Siwach, Dipsan Tirkey, Manpreet Singh, Hardik Singh, Vivek Sagar Prasad, Moirangthem Rabichandra Singh, Shamsher Singh, Nilakanta Sharma, Rajkumar Pal, Sumit, Akashdeep Singh, Gurjant Singh, Mohd Raheel, Maninder Singh, S Karthi, Mandeep Singh, Lalit Kumar Upadhyay, Abhishek, Dilpeet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh