Rishabh Pant says India needs to get better as a team after series loss against South Africa

India’s stand-in captain Rishabh Pant admitted the team needs to get better after 2-0 series loss against South Africa. India suffered an ignomious loss of 408 runs, which is their biggest loss in Test cricket in terms of runs. 

The hosts were bundled out for 140 runs in the second innings as they could not show any fight with the bat on Wednesday. Furthermore, India was bowled out for 201 runs in the first innings after South Africa had posted 489 runs on the board.

In the second innings, the Proteas declared at 260-5, giving a mammoth target of 549 runs to the home team. Ravindra Jadeja scored a fighting knock of 54 runs in the second essay but none of the other batters showed any kind of application. Sai Sudharsan faced 139 deliveries to score 14 runs but he was not positive in his approach.

Rishabh Pant said in the post-match presentation, “It’s little disappointing. As a team we need to get better. We need to give credit to the opposition. We need to take the learning and stick as a team. They dominated the series but at the same time, you can’t take credit for granted.”

He added, “We needed to be clear with our mindset. In the future, we need to learn from it and get better. They played better cricket, cricket demands that you need to capitalise as a team. And we did not do that and that cost us the whole series. The positive will be focussing in our own plan and that’s what we will take from this series.”

This is South Africa’s first series win on the Indian soil since 1999-2000 series. 

India will next take on the Proteas in a three-match ODI series, starting Sunday.