India lose to Great Britain 1-3, coach Nobbs baffled by India’s missed chances with penalty corners

"Our learning phase is over. We again missed six penalty corners and I am not sure what's going on. It is annoying." Chief coach Michael Nobbs was obviously baffled by the downward spiral after India took the lead only to go down 1-3 to Great Britain in the inaugural match of the Tri-Nation invitational tournament in Santander, says a report in The Times Of India. Earlier, in the two friendlies against South Africa, India had scraped through 6-5 in the first before losing the second 3-4.

India's chief drawbacks continued to plague them even in this match. Keeping in mind that this was the team's final warm-up event before the Olympics, Nobbs had decided to use only the 16 players chosen for the big event. He wasn't too pleased by what he saw. "Up until this series we have had an excellent record but here we have had 26 penalty corners for two goals. We forced six of them today. We are doing a video analysis to pick out anything that's going wrong," Nobbs told TOI.

"Our push-outs are fast enough and we haven't missed a trap. My suspicion is we are getting to the flick too late. That puts Sandeep or Raghu under pressure and in fact the runners are actually getting to the flick."

Meanwhile a report in Hindustan Times says that India started well late and took the lead in the third minute through Shivendra Singh's deflection off a Tushar Khandker's cross. Within two minutes, Indian goalkeeper and captain Bharat Chetri pulled off two saves, sweeping the ball off the goal-line after having initially parried Rob Moore's reverse hit.

James Tindall scored the equaliser through a 17th minute penalty corner and the teams were locked 1-1 at half-time. In the opening minutes of the second half, Britain's goalkeeper James Fair made a smart save on the near post off a Khandker shot.

Ashley Jackson put his team ahead in the 45th minute from a penalty stroke. Harry Martin made it 3-1 with a 62nd minute goal off a deflection by Chetri when Jackson scooped the ball. India will play their next match against Spain on Wednesday.