GOLD COAST, April 6 — Despite a spirited performance, the national women’s hockey team succumbed to 1-4 loss to India in a group A opening match in the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) at the Gold Coast Hockey Stadium, here today.

In the game, the squad under coach Muhamad Dharma Raj Abdullah were stunned with a goal in the sixth minute by Gurjit Kaur.

India’s captain Rani Kaur doubled the score in the 28th minute while Gurjit piled up the pressure with the third goal in the 39th minute before Lalremsiami netted the fourth goal for India in the 58th minute.

Malaysia’s solitary goal was scored by Nuraini Rashid via a penalty corner in the 38th minute.

Muhammad Dharma admitted the team made many errors at the critical moments of the match.

"I think the squad played better if compared to their performance against India in the 2017 Asia Cup but we lost 1-4. We let in two penalty goals but then the last two goals were disappointing,” he said after the game.

Muhammad Dharma said the defeat forced the team to work harder against South Africa to collect their first three points.

He said Wales who are ranked 26th in the world managed to overpower India on Thursday and the Malaysian Tigress should bounce back to show what they were capable of.

Malaysia now ranked 22nd in the world have been drawn with India (10), England (2), Wales (26) and South Africa (14) in group A.

Meanwhile captain Siti Noor Amarina Ruhani said the team played well but gave the opponents the space to score.

"We gave them too many chances to score while we failed to capitalise on ours,” she said — Bernama