“I don’t want to do too much post-mortem” – Rohit after defeat in Pune

The pitch in Pune was not unplayable and India's batters “didn't play well enough” in their first innings. That was captain Rohit Sharma's assessment after India lost to New Zealand in three days, suffering their first Test series defeat at home since December 2012, when Alastair Cook's England beat them.

“We didn't play well, we didn't bat well in the first innings, we only scored 150 (156) and the batters understand that they can't respond to that pressure (and) the challenge of playing on whatever have reacted,” Rohit said at the post-match press conference.

“The pitch wasn’t bad at all. We just didn't play well enough to get close to their (New Zealand) score in the first innings and of course being 100 (103) runs behind we always knew that was the case. “It's going to be a challenge no matter what score we get had to score – because as the game went on the pitch started to behave a bit differently and then (with) 350 to go, we knew the mindset we had was to score those runs.

“We had a great partnership with (Yashasvi) Jaiswal and (Shubman) Gill in the middle but then we lost wickets quickly here too. After that we knew the game was slipping out of our hands and then we didn't respond to that pressure.

Previously, Rohit had never suffered a Test series defeat at home. Almost an entire generation didn't know until Saturday what a home defeat in the Test series would feel like. Of the current Test squad, only Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin were part of the 2012 series defeat against England. Rohit, however, warned India against knee-jerk reactions to the recent series defeat against New Zealand.

“We have won 18 series (in a row) in India, which means we have done a lot of things well,” Rohit said. “We fought well in the first innings, we fought well in the second innings. Maybe we didn't fight as well as we should have in this series, but things like that happen. Our batters have consistently made challenging runs.” Whenever we have played in India, I don't want to think too hard about it and say that our batsmen played poorly for two or three innings. But things like this happen.

“Sometimes when you win so many games and do so well consistently, the things you want to do don't happen in one series or another. What we wanted to do in this series didn't work out for our batters. “But I don't doubt anyone's ability because everyone has great ability. These are the same batsmen who have won us all these games and series (in recent years).

“I don't want to do too much post-mortem, but we can look at how we can approach these situations differently. All of our batters have to work out their plans and trust those plans, (like) 'This is.' “My plan and it will work.” It’s different if it doesn’t work, but you have to trust it.”

The shock series loss to New Zealand has jeopardized India's chances of reaching the final of the World Test Championship (WTC). To secure their place in the top two of this cycle, India will need to win the third Test against New Zealand in Mumbai and then beat Australia 3-2 in Australia.

While Rohit expressed his dismay over India's collective failure against New Zealand, he said that he has not progressed too much towards qualifying for the WTC final.

“I think it is too early to think about WTC,” Rohit said. “It just hurts me because we lost the game (in Pune) – that’s what I’m saying. I can't think about what lies ahead and whether it can affect our chances and all that. We didn’t play well enough in those two games and that hurts. We lost the series, which clearly hurts.

“But like I just said, there are things we need to do as a unit – not just the batters but the bowlers too. It is a collective failure of the bowlers and batters. When you lose a Test match, it's not easy.” It's because of one thing: it's simply because the whole unit is failing collectively, because when you win a Test match, everyone deserves that recognition. If you lose a test, it's the same – everyone has to bear that guilt.