By Michael Nobbs

This was our first outing against quality opposition. The Australian team was as I thought a very, very good team. As I was speaking to Rick Charlesworth after the game, most of these boys are competing for positions in the Australian Olympic team. They were clearly a lot better than all our opposition in Ordos and you can see why they are rated as number one. We were beaten 4-1. But we will improve as we go along.

However, from our perspective it was a practice game and playing against the best is what we ordered and that’s what we got. If we are to qualify for the Olympics this is the competition we need.

The first 15 minutes of the game, we were either overawed or just forced to play badly. Either way we were two goals down. The speed of the game was much faster than we were used to and this led to a number of errors in the first 15 minutes which cost us the goals.

After that we settled down and played well and controlled the game until half time. We had a number of chances but couldn't convert. Sandeep had a penalty corner and the ball came back off the runner’s stick and rebounded back into his nose and he had to be taken off the field.

We played better in the second half and controlled the game for large passages but once again we were forced into some errors and against a team like Australia they were costly. We had 7 corners for the game and converted one. As they say you don't learn much from winning but you learn an awful lot when you lose.

We learnt a lot from this game and will continue to test our players and learn. The score was an indication of the overall game as we had numerous chances to turn this loss into a win. The errors were costly and against a lower ranked team it would have had such an influence. We need to be as good as them and if we do we will stand a very good chance to qualify for the Olympics which is after all what we are trying to achieve.

(Michael Nobbs is Indian hockey coach)