‘Hurt’ Rohit won’t blame India batters after NZ failure

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‘Hurt’ Rohit won’t blame India batters after NZ ********

India skipper Rohit Sharma has refused to heap pressure on his batsmen following the team’s 113-run loss to New Zealand in the second Test.

The hosts were bundled out for 156 in their first innings in response to New Zealand’s 259 and managed only 245 while chasing 359 to ****** to a humbling defeat in three days as the tourists won their first Test series in India.

Rohit’s side were skittled for 46 in the first innings of their opening defeat in Bengaluru and Saturday’s result meant they have now lost a home series for the first time since 2012.

“It has happened in two Test matches. We’ve won 18 straight series in India, so it means we’ve done a lot of good things,” Rohit told reporters.

“In this series, we might not have been able to bat the way we wanted but such things happen. We’ve made runs consistently on challenging pitches in India. I don’t want to think we’ve done a lot wrong.

“Two of our batting matches were bad, two or three innings were bad, but it happens. Sometimes you consistently win matches and do well but in one or two series it doesn’t happen.

“I can’t doubt anyone’s ability… I don’t want to do a post-mortem, but yes we see what we should do differently in such situations. All the batters should come with their own plan, all the batters should trust their plan.”

India head to Australia for a challenging five-match tour next month and will need victories to improve their chances of reaching a third consecutive World Test Championship (WTC) final.

“I think it’s too early to think about the WTC. I’m just hurting because we lost the game, that’s what I’ll say, I can’t think about what ***** ahead,” Rohit said.

“I think we didn’t play well enough in these two games and that is hurting, we lost the series, that is hurting.

“There are things that need to do as a unit, not just the batters but also the bowlers; it’s a collective ********.

“We want to show up well at Wankhede and try and win that Test match,” he said, determined for a strong fightback in the third Test, which starts this week in Mumbai.

“I’m not somebody who would just blame the batters or the bowlers. It’s the team that has ******* to accept the challenge that was thrown at us, it’s as simple as that. We will come out with better intent, better ideas, and better methods at Wankhede.”

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