Rohit on India's Test series loss to NZ: It is a collective failure

Pune, Oct 26 (PTI) Skipper Rohit Sharma chose not to place batters under the cosh for the series defeat against New Zealand but reminded them that they need to "trust their plans" to succeed against tough opponents.

New Zealand outclassed India by 113 runs in the second Test to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match Test series.

This was India’s first Test series defeat at home since 2012-13 when they went down to England 1-2.

"I do not doubt anyone's ability. I won't do much postmortem of this, but batters must come with their plans and trust on the plans like New Zealand batters showed," Rohit said during the post-match press conference.

"It's disappointing. It's not what we expected. We got to give credit to New Zealand as they played better than us. We failed to respond to those challenges." Then Rohit touched in detail on the batting malfunction part.

"I didn't think we batted well enough to get runs on the board. You've got to pick 20 wickets to win, yes, but batters have to put runs on the board.

"It was a great fightback to restrict them to 250-odd (in the first innings) but we knew it was going to be challenging. It wasn't a pitch where a lot was happening. Things would've been slightly different had we got a bit closer in the first innings," he said.

Even though the series lost, Rohit promised a much better outing in third Test at Mumbai in a few days.

"We want to show up well at Wankhede and try and win that Test. It's a collective failure. I'm not somebody who would blame just the batters or the bowlers. We will come out with better intent, better ideas and better methods at Wankhede," he added.

The series defeat also dented India’s chances of progressing to the World Test Championship final despite keeping the top spot on the table.

Rohit accepted the consequences of a rare series defeat at home.

I am hurting because we lost the game. I can’t think about what lies ahead and can it affect our chances (WTC Final). We didn’t play well enough, and we lost the series and that is hurting. There are things we need to do as a unit," he added. PTI