What Rohit Sharma said after India’s historic Test series defeat against New Zealand

India captain Rohit Sharma attended a press conference after the Test series loss to New Zealand. The India captain was criticized by the press present at the Maharashtra Cricket Stadium in Pune after his dismal performance in the first two matches of the series.

Sharma took time to answer every question and stressed that there was no reason to overreact after India’s first home series defeat in almost 12 years. The India captain spoke about the team’s winning attitude, the need for some players to step up and how Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were getting time off from time to time.

Here’s everything Rohit Sharma said at the post-match press conference in Pune

Rohit Sharma on losing the Test match

We didn’t play. We didn’t fight it. Well, we scored only 150 runs in the first innings. And the batsmen understand that they don’t respond to the pressure and challenge of playing on any pitch we’ve played on. The pitch wasn’t bad at all. We just didn’t play well enough to, you know, get close to their first-round score. And then, of course, with 100 runs under our belt, we always knew it was going to be difficult. As the match progressed, the pitch started to behave a bit differently. And then yeah, 350 to score, we knew we had that mindset that we wanted to score, score those runs. We had a great partnership with Jaiswal and Gill in midfield but then we lost wickets again quickly. And then, of course, we knew the game was getting out of our hands and then we didn’t react to that pressure.

IND vs New Zealand, Pune Test: Match Report

Rohit Sharma on poor batting

Yes, we failed in 2 Test matches. We won 18 Test series in India. Which only means we did something right. We batted well in the first innings and we couldn’t bat well in the second innings either. But such things happen. We did well on challenging pitches in India, so I don’t want to go into that too much. It’s not that we did everything wrong. We did poorly in 1-2 rounds and yes, I think we are slow in 1-2 rounds. Our batsmen didn’t perform well and I don’t want to doubt anyone’s ability. These same batsmen have done well in the past and I don’t want to dwell on that performance posthumously. Beaters have to come up with a plan and trust it. New Zealand batsmen have shown that if you come with a plan, you can dominate. However, they were ahead of the game and they dictated the course of the game. Over the last 5-6 years, we have generally set the pace of the game.

IND vs New Zealand, second test, third day: Overview of the most important events | Scorecard

Thoughts on the final qualifications for the WTC

I think it’s too early to think about the WTC finale. I’m just hurting because we lost the match. That’s what I’ll say. I can’t think about what lies ahead and whether it might affect our chances and so on. I think we didn’t play well enough in these two games and that hurts. But like I just said, there are things we need to do well as a team, not just the batsmen but also the bowlers. This is a collective failure for the bowlers and batsmen. So if you lose a test match, it won’t be because of just one particular thing, but simply because of the failure of the entire unit, because when you win a test match, everyone deserves that recognition. If you lose a Test match, the same thing happens – everyone has to take the blame.

India’s chances of final WTC qualification after defeat in Pune: details

“The most important attitude is to win the Test match.”

If you bat for three days, you will win the Test match. There are three days left until the end of the match. So I think the idea was to try to achieve that result. Because you know when the pitch does what it does, it’s not easy to play with that one mindset. You also have to look for runs and that’s how you try to put pressure on the bowlers. Like I mentioned about the New Zealand batsmen, they tried to do different things and it worked out very well because they tried to do different things and put pressure on the bowlers. In this process, there is a high chance that the bowlers will try to do different things, misread the length and this will work to the opponent’s advantage. This is exactly what happened. We tried to do different things, but it didn’t work out. It worked for New Zealand and that’s how they scored those runs and we didn’t. But again, if we feel like it, we can save the test match, we will save the test match. But I think we have a good chance of winning the Test match. You know, there are some big partnerships, you never know, anything is possible and there’s still plenty of time left to play. Therefore, under no circumstances will I adopt the attitude of first saving a Test match and then winning it. No, I think my way of thinking does the opposite. I’ll try to find opportunities to win games first, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try to find other options. But I think the mentality has to be to win the Test match. This is how we managed to play the Kanpur Test match in two days as we wanted to score runs quickly. I know there were a lot of runs on that pitch, but you know, at one point we were 100/1. So things like this can happen. You never know if there are multiple partnerships and then the opposition is under pressure to defend that goal. And that’s what we wanted to do. we wanted to put pressure on them with big partnerships and, you know, try to play with different angles. However, it didn’t work in our favor.

The team environment should not change

I simply said this in connection with these three sessions. I have no intention of reacting differently. Look at the number of matches we won in India. I think I was just watching TV and out of 54 Test matches, we won 42 Test matches. That’s almost 80% of the Test matches we won. So more good things happened than bad. That’s why I look at bad things so often. Of course it’s important to look at it, but not react so much when you know that the guys in the band are starting to feel that something, something different, is happening. I don’t want to create an environment where people start to doubt themselves and put unnecessary pressure. This is not how we want to play cricket. Of course, you lose a series here and there. We had a great run for 12 years, which meant we did a lot of good things during those periods. So just because we lost the series, I don’t think there’s anything we should talk about or do differently, but yes, we have to find ways to get out of situations like this. When you win the draw in India. you have a little advantage, you know, throwing runes on the board. And you know, as the pitch slowly dries out, it starts to change as the game goes on. Then you try to find your way into the game.

“No need for one-on-one conversations.”

I am I’m certainly not going to overreact to what happened here. You need to have a quiet conversation with specific people and let them know where they are and what we as a team require from them. Also, I don’t think you need to force them to sit in a team room one-on-one and go through rounds and tell them that’s what you should be doing. And that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do. I don’t think this is the right forum for this. But again, the important thing is that when we were only going to play five or six Test matches, all we wanted was support from the team. And that’s what I’m going to try and do with a lot of players who haven’t been to Australia or are playing their first or second Test match. So the clear message is to make them feel nice and calm, making them feel like they belong here. These are things they need to understand. And this is our responsibility. We have to strive for it and constantly impose on the team.

Role clarity

In terms of messaging, I don’t think there are any unclear messages about what they should be doing. They came here because they are good at something and that’s what we want to rely on because they are good at something. We want to focus more on this part rather than not knowing or understanding what they don’t do or what they can’t do. Because some of the guys you know, actually many of us, not some but many of us, played a lot of cricket to our strengths rather than our weaknesses. So the weaknesses are there. But there is something you can improve on, work on. But I think if you want to play 10-15 years in international cricket, you work more on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. You know, because you build your strength more and more, and that allows you to succeed more than you fail. Weaknesses need to be addressed, but I believe the ratio should be 70-30% or 60-40%.

In Ashwin and Jadeja’s flop show

I don’t think it’s fair. It is our responsibility to ensure that we win the Test match. Not only these two players, they played a major role in helping us win 18 consecutive series at home. So I won’t dwell on it too much, especially with these two guys. They know exactly what’s going on and are sometimes allowed to have a few bad games here and there. We have to be ready for the other guys to step in as well.

If Ash doesn’t do well, Jadeja, Washy, Kuldeep or Axar must come to the party. That’s why it has to be shared among everyone. But yes, Washy played a great match, which we are really happy with. Again, you’re talking about someone who scored 500 and 300 goals respectively, so he knows exactly how he scored those goals. And like every time they came out and won the test matches for us. So it’s very difficult for them to have that expectation every time they have to score for us. It may happen that something will go wrong.

“I didn’t expect the ball to play in Bengaluru.”

When you go into a match, you don’t know what to expect. Like I didn’t expect football to feature so much in Bangalore, right? And it’s the same here. You can’t think that we will go with five or four spinners. You try to get the best balance possible. If the ball goes back, a fast bowler is needed. Yes, there are times when they won’t have as big a role to play. It’s similar with New Zealanders. Sears struggled to bowl more than 10 overs. So you read the content. That’s why you play with three spinners. That’s why we played three spinners because we wanted to keep the spin rate balanced. If the ball starts to stay low and you know it, there will be a consistent bounce. So you need stitches to go into the image. This is how we choose a team. Again we only lost 2 games. We won so many matches in India where the batsmen played well on poor pitches, why don’t we focus on that? This is the first time we have fallen. 12 saal me ek baar to allowed hai yaar. If we had been failing for 12 years, we wouldn’t have won anything. There are high expectations in India that we have to win everything. We have developed this habit. It’s not your fault, we held ourselves to the best standards. Foreign teams come and think how well India is doing and analyze it. We lost by a slim margin and that happens. Watch the last series against Bangladesh and see how we won. So I don’t want to go into too much. It hurts me, but I’m not going to change the system, we will change it slightly.

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