India's game faltered after taking lead, says Oltmans

India hockey coach Roelant Oltmans feels his team faltered in executing its game-plan after taking the lead against defending champions Australia in the lost Sultan Azlan Shah Cup game here on Tuesday.

India opened the scoring in the 25th minute through Harmanpreet Singh, but then conceded three field goals to suffer a defeat in the preliminary league fixture.

"The way the match turned had something to do with our non-execution of the game-plan. After we gained the lead, we stopped playing the way we were doing earlier," said Oltmans.

"Until we scored our goal, we played fantastic hockey.

After the first two minutes, we controlled the game and had a lot of good attacks. But it started going down after we took the lead," the coach added.

Australia are current world champions, having won the last two World Cups in 2010 and 2014.

They are also nine-time winners of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, which India have won five times.