Men's Hockey World Cup 2018: 5 Indian players to watch out for 

#3 Mandeep Singh

Mandeep's goal-scoring prowess will be vital for India

At the Champions Trophy at Breda, the Indian strikers regained their magic touch which seemed to have been lost at Gold Coast.

In the opener against Pakistan, Mandeep Singh drifted in behind the Pakistani defenders and manufactured a PC at the end of the first quarter. The Jalandhar lad then combined brilliantly with Lalit to earn yet another at the beginning of the second.

Mandeep then found the back of the net in the final quarter to register India's third goal when goalie Imran Butt was taken off which effectively knocked the wind out of Pakistan's sails.

Yet again, against Pakistan, in the Asian Champions Trophy at Muscat, Akashdeep Singh delivered an assist to Mandeep who trapped the ball with his back towards the goal and.squeezed it between his legs, and into the net, while being rooted to the spot.

The Indian strikers are obviously combining well, of late, and Mandeep revealed the secret to Sportskeeda after the Champions Trophy.

"After we returned from the CWG, we took some time to retrospect on what went wrong and realized that we did extremely well to enter the D multiple times but were erring in the D by not connecting on to assists or not being able to take shots on goal."

"When we started our training camp, coach Harendra Singh conducted separate sessions only for the strikers for us to get a better idea of when to take a hard crack at goal and when to push the ball deftly. We worked very hard on those aspects and made a note of all that we had learned."

All that Mandeep and co. have learned will be put to a stern test when they attempt to penetrate the rock-solid Belgian defense on Sunday. Success against the Red Lions will the first step, for the Indian forward line with bigger challenges to follow.