IANS

Singapore, Jun 12: India's chances of qualifying for the medal round of the junior hockey World Cup received a blow Thursday as they went down 2-3 to the Netherlands in a Pool D match at the Sengkang Sports Complex here.

Mink Van Der Weerden recorded a hat-trick (10th min, 13, 51) in what was a crucial game for India. Mandeep Antil (5th) and Innocent Kullu (53th) struck for India.

In another Pool D match, New Zealand defeated Singapore 3-1 to move to the second place in the table and push India to the third spot. Netherlands, which leads the table with nine points from three wins, are through to the next stage.

India now will have to beat Poland in their final pool match Friday and hope that Netherlands beat New Zealand.

India started aggressively and tasted success with Mandeep scoring a field goal.

Weerden then struck two goals in nine minutes to threw spanner on India's good work. He converted their second and third penalty corner to give Netherlands a 2-1 lead.

The Indian forward line came hard on the Netherlands, but squandered many opportunities, including two penalty corners in the last five minutes of the first half.

Penalty corner specialist Diwakar Ram looked out of sorts as he missed India's third short corner in the 48th minute.

Weerden scored his third through a short corner to give Netherland a 3-1 cushion.

Innocent Kullu converted a penalty corner to pull back one.

India came close to equalise but Dutch custodian Blaak Pirmin stood solid to deny them in three more penalty corners.