London: It cannot get worse for Indian Hockey team hit a new low as they finished at the bottom of the bottom of the table of the London Olympic Games at the Riverbank Arena here today. 

India playing in the 11th -12th classification match lost 2-3 against South Africa to crash to their sixth straight defeat at the Games. They are now the only team in the competition who have failed to secure a single win.

India playing in the Olympics after a gap of eight years after failing to qualify for Beijing Games has touched a new low as their previous worst came at Atlanta Games 1996 where they finished eight. 

For South Africa, Andrew Cronje (8th minute), Timothy Drummond (34th) and Lloyd Norris-Jones (65th) scored, while Sandeep Singh (14th) and Dharamvir Singh (67th) sounded the cage.

The match started on a sad note for India as Manpreet Singh had to leave the pitch after being hit on the head by the stick of Lloyd Norris-Jones. 

South Africa started off on an attacking note and drew the first blood of the match in the eight minutes through Cronje. But then they could not hold on to the lead for long as Sandeep Singh equalised from a short corner. 

Just before the breather, the South African sensing the urgency of the situation increased the tempo of the game and scored the second goal of the match through Drummond.

After the change of ends, both the teams out to salvage pride put up great but then could score a goal as the custodians on either side were good at averting any plausible danger.

As when the time was running out, Norris-Jones scored to help his team take an unassailable 3-1 lead. India did pull one back through Dharamvir but that it was too late for the men in blue.

By Indian Sports News Network