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Given the circumstances, India’s skipper Rohit Sharma
thinks his team scored a respectable 245 in the first innings in Centurion, but
they bowled badly after that. He did, however, promise not to be too hard on
his rookie bowlers. In their 11th Test match, Prasidh Krishna, making his
debut, and Shardul Thakur combined for 194 runs in 39 overs for just two
wickets. In similar conditions, South Africa knocked India out for 131 in the
second innings, and India lost by an innings and 32 runs.
“We were not good enough to win this Test
match,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation. “Having been put
in to bat, I thought we got decent runs on the board on that track. KL Rahul
batted brilliantly to get us that score. But then, you know, we failed to
exploit the conditions with the ball. And then again, didn’t show up with the
bat today as well. Our batting was poor in the second innings. Virat Kohli was
brilliant in the end there, but if you want to win Test matches, you’ve got to
come together collectively. We failed to do that.”
Rohit said Rahul’s return as a middle-order batter and
wicketkeeper was a positive, but there was not much else to take away from this
game. “Obviously, when you play a game like that, there’s not a lot of
positives, but the way KL batted in the first innings, it showed a lot of us
what you need to do on that kind of pitch. And then, bowlers, obviously a lot
of these guys haven’t been here before. They’re still learning, so I don’t want
to be too critical of them as well.
“You know, it’s just a loss. We’ll regroup, we’ll
fight back hard.”