Ind vs NZ, WTC – Rohit Sharma – ‘I was not at my best in leading the team, and with the bat’

November 3, 2024

There isn’t much one can say after losing a three-Test series 3-0. Especially if it’s the first time such a thing has happened at home. So captain Rohit Sharma, when asked about it, kept it simple. Bitter pill to swallow? “Yeah, absolutely,” he said. That aside, “we failed as a unit”, and that there were “lots of mistakes” and “we didn’t play our best cricket”.

Chasing 147 to get any possible WTC points from a series already conceded, India crashed and burned to 121 all out. For a while, when Rishabh Pant was doing his stuff with a 57-ball 64, there was hope. But before that it was 29 for 5, and after Pant fell, to a contentious third-umpire’s decision, it all unravelled quite quickly. Almost entirely to spin, not for the first time this series.

“Losing a series, losing a Test match is never easy, but [this is] something that is not easily digested,” Rohit said at the presentation. “But, again, we didn’t play our best cricket. We know that and we accept that. New Zealand played better than us throughout the series. There were lots of mistakes that we made throughout the series, and we have to accept it.

“The first and the second Test, we didn’t put enough runs on the board in the first innings. And we were very much behind the game. This game, we got that 30 [28]-runs lead and we felt that we were a little bit ahead of the game. That target was chaseable. All we had to do was a little bit of application, which we failed to do as a unit.”

Questions about Rohit’s own batting form have been doing the rounds this series. There was a 52 in the second innings of the first Test in Bengaluru, but outside of that, it’s been 2, 0, 8, 18 and 11. On ESPNcricinfo, Sanjay Manjrekar also spoke about Rohit’s captaincy, and what he called T20 tactics in a Test match.

In this chase in Mumbai, Rohit hit two fours in a run-a-ball 11, but fell when he couldn’t get his favourite shot – the pull – right against Matt Henry.

“Look, when you’re chasing a target like that, you want runs on the board as well. And that is something that was there in my mind,” Rohit said. “It just didn’t come off. When it doesn’t come off, it doesn’t look that great. There are certain ideas, certain methods that I go into bat with. Sometimes it doesn’t come off, and this series it hasn’t come off, which I am very disappointed with.

“As a captain as well, I was not at my best in leading the team, and with the bat as well. That is from a personal point of view.”

As always, there were positives. In the batting department as well, where the younger players – Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Sarfaraz Khan, and Washington Sundar showed, at various points, that runs could be scored on tough pitches. Something Rohit (91 runs in six innings) and Virat Kohli (93 runs in six innings) couldn’t do.

“Those guys showed how to bat on these surfaces,” Rohit said about the younger lot. “You have to be slightly ahead, and be proactive when you’re playing on a pitch like that. Which we all know. Which we have discussed many a time in the last three or four years. We are aware of what we need to do. It’s just that, this was an unfortunate series where it didn’t come off. We tried to do certain things, it didn’t come off. Which is why we lagged behind in the series.”

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