After suffering the whitewash in the two-match away Test series against the hosts New Zealand, Indian captain Virat Kohli has pointed out that the entire batting team failed in this series. He also talked about why they went with the youngster Rishabh Pant in this series rather than the experienced Wriddhiman Saha.
Before the beginning of the latest series, the no.1-ranked Test team India won all the seven matches of the 2019-21 ICC World Test Championship.
However, the Indian batting totally failed in the Test series against the hosts New Zealand as the visitors scored 165, 191, 242 and 124 runs respectively.
One of the biggest questions has risen from the beginning of the Test series was the selection of Pant in the playing XI.
Due to his inconsistent form, the youngster was earlier dropped from the Test playing XI after Saha fully recovered from the long-battled injuries. Though Saha played a superb role behind the wickets since his return, he hasn’t impressed with the bat yet.
In both the Tests of this New Zealand tour, the team management chose Pant for the wicketkeeping role as Saha warmed the bench.
We thought Rishabh Pant will come good in this series: Virat Kohli
Talking about this selection, Kohli claimed that Pant impressed them with his hard work in the practice. But while Pant once again failed to impress the team with his bat, scoring only 60 runs in this series (average 15.00), Kohli claimed that the entire team batting performance was not good enough.
Kohli said after the completion of the series, “We have given a lot of chances to Rishabh, you need to figure out when is the right time to give someone a chance. I don’t see anyone taking their place for granted in this team, no one here has come in thinking that I am going to play every game.
“Rishabh has worked very hard behind the scenes, so we thought of giving him a chance in this series. We thought he will come good in this series, but as a collective unit, we did not show a good batting performance.”
Most of the Indian batsmen failed to shine in the Test series, including the skipper Kohli. While he recently lost the top place of the ICC Test batting rankings, the right-handed batsman scored only 38 runs with an average of 9.50.
The Test vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane scored 46, 29, 7 and 9 runs respectively in this Test series.
However, Kohli is confident enough on him as he talked about the importance of Rahane in this Test team.
Kohli claimed, “Firstly, Rahane is one of those players who has been solid for us in Test cricket. It is about impact performances and he has played some crucial knocks. You also have to figure out as to how many guys average more than 40 in your team. Few games here and there if you don’t score runs, doesn’t mean you are a bad player. There are no issues there.
“In the Australia series, Pujara was the standout player. You cannot single out anyone. We have an aim of scoring big runs, it can happen with everyone scoring 50 or 60 or with one guy scoring 150 as Pujara did in Australia. In our team, we work as a collective unit.”
Before the Test series, India also played five T20Is and three ODIs owing to this New Zealand tour. While India won the T20I series by the 5-0 margin, they suffered the 3-0 defeat in the ODI series.