India vs New Zealand – Rohit Sharma is ‘hurt’ after his refereeing error at Bengaluru Stadium

In what appeared to be a puzzling move, Rohit opted to bat, selecting three fielders and only two fast bowlers despite rain on the first day and the pitch remaining under covers for the better part of two days.

“You see, you try and you judge. Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you don’t, and I was on the other side of it this time,” Rohit said after India collapsed to their lowest score on home soil. And their third lowest level overall. I’m a little hurt that I made that call. But for us as a team, I think those are the challenges.

“So what if we put ourselves under a little pressure? We want to play well. We want to challenge ourselves. This time, it didn’t work, the challenges that were thrown at us. We didn’t respond.” Well, and we found ourselves in a situation where we were out for 46 innings, as a captain, it certainly hurts to see that number, but in 365 days, you’re going to make two or three bad calls.

India named three spinners in the XI – R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav – and left out fast bowler Akash Deb, who played both Tests against Bangladesh last month. As it turned out, the pitch had a lot of support for the fast bowlers, and India were reduced to 36 for 6 by lunch.

Rohit said the rationale for selecting three spinners was the bare look of the pitch, and the fact that Kuldeep has had success on flat surfaces.

“Look, we felt there wasn’t a lot of grass on the pitch,” he said. “We thought he would do everything he had to do in the first two periods and then it would change as the game went on.” “This is the way [it is] When we played in India, the first session was always crucial and then the wickets tended to settle and then the players started playing.

“As I said, there wasn’t a lot of grass, so we felt the reason we added Kuldeep was because he plays on flat pitches and takes wickets, so we expected the pitch to be a little flatter than it turned out to be. So it’s clearly a misjudgment of the pitch.”

Another talking point was Virat Kohli who was ranked at number three for the first time since 2016 because Shubman Gill was not fit to play. In his previous six innings at number three, Kohli has scored just 97 runs at an average of 19.40. Those numbers took a further hit when he fell for a 12-ball duck, gloving a high delivery from William O’Rourke into the leg gully. Rohit said that Kohli stepped forward so as not to disturb the players below him.

“It’s the experienced players who have to take that extra responsibility and this time it was Virat. He was the one who was ready to do it.” [bat at No. 3]“We asked him if he could manage No. 3 because of Sarfaraz,” said Rohit [Khan] … We wanted to give Sarfaraz also the position he usually bats at [at] Four, five, six maybe.

“But we didn’t want to change Rishabh and Kaal [Rahul] Then Sarfaraz went at four and hit Virat at three. It’s a good sign actually, we have players coming in who take on this responsibility and take on the challenge. It’s a good sign. After a long time, Kuala Lumpur finds themselves at number six, so we want to keep him… and have him bat there.”

Despite the difficult day India had, Rohit was in good spirits, and began the press conference with a quip, “Chalao Talwar”. [draw your swords]. It was also unusual for the India captain to face the press at the end of such a day during a Test, and Rohit admitted they would need to dig deep to come back after New Zealand finished 134 ahead with seven wickets in hand.

“I think for us to stay in the game, we want to not let them get away,” he said. “[They’ve scored] There’s a very large number of rounds, obviously 180, so about 140 rounds [134]So [keep them] As little as possible. The wicket seems to be settling a bit, so we expect the pitch to play that way. “We have to hit hard in the second half and try to see if we can make a game out of it.”

Ashish Pant is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo