India dropped Wriddhiman Saha and brought back Rishabh Pant as the team's first-choice wicketkeeper batsman in New Zealand considering the latter's batting ability. Pant, however, failed to make the opportunity count, with repeated failures at No.7 in Wellington and Christchurch, aggregating only 60 runs in four innings with a best of 25.
But skipper Virat Kohli said it would be unfair to criticise the youngster, for it was a collective team failure that ended in the 2-0 series whitewash.
"We have given a lot of chances to Rishabh, you need to figure out when is the right time to give someone a chance," Kohli told reporters at the end of the disastrous tour. "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."
It can be argued that if Pant hadn't been dropped at home late last year, he would've come into a difficult tour abroad with more runs and confidence. "Rishabh has worked very hard behind the scenes, so we thought of giving him a chance in this series," Kohli added. "We thought he will come good in this series, but as a collective unit, we did not show a good batting performance."
Performances from Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane are also under the scanner, with two of the team's most experienced batsmen failing to last long at the crease throughout.
Kohli, though, didn't think the blame is on them for the series loss.
"Firstly, Rahane is one of those players who has been solid for us in Test cricket," Kohli said. "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," the captain added.
(Inputs from PTI)
