BANGALORE: “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. Earlier, in the two friendlies against South Africa, India had scraped through 6-5 in the first before losing the second 3-4.

The result on Saturday evening came in heavy, wet weather with rain preparing the teams for the conditions likely to prevail in London.

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.”

Nobbs told the team that its learning phase was over and that it was time to deliver. “We just have to get the penalty corners fixed and we will do well. If we don’t it will be a struggle.”

Nobbs also pointed to another perennial problem in the team: the forwardline’s ability to finish. That included a superb chance which Tushar Khandker had but was denied by British goalkeeper James Fair. “We played well to get 34 circle penetrations but still missed easy goals. I would say it still comes back to penalty corners to win games. It takes all the pressure off scoring field goals when you get one or two goals per game from penalty corners.”

The team also had to endure an injury to their chief defender Ignace Tirkey which put immense pressure on the rearguard. “Ignace limped out after rolling his ankle in the first 15 minutes. X-rays said it was only a strain. But he will be out for about a week. We will be using Kothajit from the reserves till Ignace is better,” Nobbs said.

The start looked promising for the Indians as they went ahead in the third minute through Shivendra Singh who deflected Tushar Khandker’s cross. But James Tindall scored the equaliser through a 17th-minute penalty corner before Ashley Jackson put his team ahead in the 45th minute off a penalty stroke.

What followed was a stirring battle but Harry Martin snuffed out India’s hopes of a comeback in the 62nd minute when he pounced on a rebound from goalkeeper Bharat Chetri after Jackson had scooped the ball goalward.

Chetri returned a mixed bag after having pulled off a fine save in the first half, sweeping the ball off the goal-line after having initially parried Rob Moore’s reverse hit.