Rockingham (Australia): The Indian men’s hockey team started their sojourn Down Under on a disappointing note, losing 1-4 to Australia ‘A’ in the first international friendly on Monday.<\/p>\n
At the Rockingham club ground, some 50kms from Perth, a rusty India dished out a spineless display and conceded two soft goals in both the halves.<\/p>\n
Don Hotchkis (7th minute), Jacob Whetton (21st), Matt Ghodes (57th) and Tom Wickham (61st) scored for Australia, while Rupinder Singh (30th) converted a penalty corner for India out of the half-a-dozen they earned during the match.<\/p>\n
However, Indian eves brought some relief for the visitors when they drew the third Test against Australia 1-1 at Mundrah, a suburb about 100 km from Perth.<\/p>\n
The Australian women surged ahead with a third-minute goal, only to see Vandana Kataria equalising 17 minutes later.<\/p>\n
Indian men’s team chief coach Michael Nobbs, however, refused to give too much importance to the defeat but said it was a “good lesson” for his wards.<\/p>\n
“We played against the best team. When you do so, you are not supposed to commit mistakes. We did commit a lot of them, and got punished. This is a good lesson for team,” he said.<\/p>\n
The women’s team manager, AS Subbaiah, meanwhile, was ecstatic with the outcome of the match.<\/p>\n
“We are improving match by match. Today, Austrlaia put up a good fight to snatch the series, but we could manage to draw,” Subbaiah said.<\/p>\n
Monday’s drawn result means that the four-match series is tied at 1-1 with both the teams taking on each other in the fourth and final Test on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
India had earlier lost the series opener 2-3 to Australia before drawing parity in the series with a hard-fought 2-1 win over the home team in the second Test on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Indian men’s team, meanwhile, will again play Australia ‘A’ in their second international friendly at Mundrah on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Times Of India<\/p>\n
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Rockingham (Australia): The Indian men’s hockey team started their sojourn Down Under on a disappointing note, losing 1-4 to Australia ‘A’ in the first international friendly on Monday. At the Rockingham club ground, some 50kms from Perth, a rusty India dished out a spineless display and conceded two soft goals in both the halves. Don […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers"],"yoast_head":"\n