'We were not good enough,' admits Rohit Sharma after Adelaide defeat

Adelaide: Rohit Sharma was all smiles and jocular when he addressed the news conference on the eve of the second Test here on Thursday. He talked glowingly about India's riveting win in Perth and how happy he was watching the match on TV with his new-born in his arms. Less than four days later he was sitting in the same chair, but in a completely contrasting mood.

Barring winning a rare toss, little went right for the returning captain in the second Test which India lost by 10 wickets under two and half days. His decision, which was based on sound logic, to bat down the order didn't work. Decision to bat first, again a right call, failed. And the decision to include R Ashwin in place of Washington Sundar didn't pay off. But India paid the price for collective ineptitude. And more particularly against the pink ball.        

Rohit, however, wasn't willing to offer India's inexperience of playing day/night matches as the reason for their comprehensive loss.   

"You know when you come to Australia, you have to play a pink-ball Test match," he said categorically. "There is no doubt about it. It's just that we didn't play well enough and Australia played better cricket than us and they won the Test match. Why did we not play well? Of course, there are a lot of things that we need to look into in our game, our plans and the stuff we do during the game."

Upon probing, he conceded that batting with a pink ball was a little tricky because of its different dynamics, but "not an excuse to point out." 

"It is, of course, slightly different from what you usually do with the white sightscreen and pink ball," he pointed out. "It is something different. We are used to playing with the black sightscreen and white ball. But again, this is what it is. You know when you come to Australia, you have to be mentally ready to bat under different situations, different conditions. It can be difficult but that is not an excuse for any batter to say or point out. I think the conditions are there for both teams. They batted well, they got the runs. We didn't bat well enough to get enough runs and that is where I think was the difference."

Rohit agreed that India didn't make best use of the conditions both when they batted (in day) and bowled (under lights). 

"You know, when you come to Australia, I feel the best chance of winning a Test match is by putting runs on the board," he noted. "And of course, when we won the toss, we elected to bat. We knew that there would be challenges with that ball. But in the past, we have done that many times when the conditions have been a little challenging and we have batted really well to put runs on the board and then try and put pressure on the opposition. That is the disappointing part that we didn't bat well enough. We probably were 30-40 runs short with the bat in the first innings.

"Then there were opportunities when Australia was batting and we failed to take those chances. And obviously when you miss those chances, it is never easy and it's not going to be easy. The opposition will always make you pay for it. And that's what happened. And then in the second innings as well, we thought the conditions were better. Again, we were not good enough."