Facing the world number one team, nicknamed the Kookaburras, the Malaysian squad, trained by head coach A Arul Selvaraj, were stunned as early as in the first minute when Tom Wickham connected with his teammates’ superb cross.

Australia then made it 2-0 in the 19th minute through Blake Govers’ penalty corner goal before wrapping up victory through a Jeremy Hayward penalty corner set piece in the 30th minute.

However, credit must be given to national goalkeeper Muhammad Hafizuddin Othman for preventing the Aussies from piling on more goals.

Meanwhile, Arul, who described the early minutes of the game as disappointing, said he would make an assessment of the match to identify the weaknesses that led to the goals.

“But overall, goalkeeper Hafizuddin played well and thwarted some of the Aussies’ attempts. What we need to do now is to have better control of the ball so as not to lose it to the opponent easily.

“Two of the three goals were from penalty corners and we will do an analysis, re-evaluate our weaknesses and try to overcome them in tomorrow’s second match,” he said in a statement.

Despite losing 3-0, the Speedy Tigers overcame Australia 4-3 on penalties in a friendly shootout session with the Aussies, after the match.

“It’s a positive thing for us because we won the penalty shootout against a team ranked number one in the world,” said Arul.

The team will continue with the test series against Australia tomorrow before finishing the last two games on April 26 and April 28.