Thursday, September 14 2006 12:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Monchengladbach: Indian coach Vasudevan Baskaran says the deep defence, which conceded 10 penalty corners, let the team down in the last league match against the Netherlands in the hockey World Cup here.

Baskaran says apart from goof-ups by defenders, which allowed a lot of penalty corners to the Dutch side, the Indians failed to hold on to the ball.

"In fact, the big difference between the teams was the penalty corner conversion. But otherwise, I thought our boys played extremely well today. Our big mistake was that we did not try to slow down the game and I felt that the forwards should have kept the ball for longer time rather than go on all out attack."

"Consequently, we left ourselves open to counter-attacks and the Dutch were quite quick in turn-arounds. Overall, it was rather disappointing that we conceded penalty corners so easily and this is something that we need to work on," he says.

When asked about the two yellow cards, to Kanwalpreet Singh and Viren Rasquinha, Baskaran says, "Our players should be aware of the rules of the game. After all, this is the World Cup and not a domestic tournament. They should have been more careful."

He concedes that the defence of the penalty corners was also not up to the mark and goalkeeper Adrian D'Souza was a bit late in reacting during the first two penalty corners.