India’s newly appointed T20I captain Shreyas Iyer said that India’s winless series against England “definitely hurt” after their defeat in the final T20I as well. They faced a 0-4 series defeat and a surrender of the No. 1 spot in the ICC team rankings as well. However, Iyer applauded England for playing “exceptional cricket across all three departments.”

“Honestly, hasn’t been any particular point but you see we kept on going from one venue to another and we kept on facing challenges especially in terms of the dimensions, the grounds, the conditions,” Shreyas Iyer said at the post-match press conference. “Just to adapt to it as quickly as we could have anticipated that didn’t happen, that was one challenge and the other one is definitely they outplayed us in all departments I would say. So, I think combinations of all these points definitely led to this result”.

However, he also said that fielding was one part the team particularly lagged in but also said that the result was a great learning for him as a captain and for the team as well.

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“When I say great learning, it’s all about how you turn up for the tournament,” Iyer said. “You can’t just have that mindset that you will come to England and you will win the series. You need to work hard, you need to be focused, which we were as a team. But I personally feel that they played exceptional cricket throughout in all three departments. So, probably, the results also went in their favour because they were comprehensive in all three departments”.

“Washington you saw, I mean, how he performed in the last game and how he’s been going. He’s a talented lad but I felt that every individual who is part of this team right now, we lost the series so we wanted to try something new, which combination could have been better on this particular wicket, which was a belter today. So, I think based on these decisions, we probably decided to drop him today and we wanted to try a new combination,” he explained.

However, Team India’s search for the right combination went on in the match too with another change as they dropped Vaibhav Sooryavanshi for Sanju Samson at the top of the order.

“We needed to try the best combination that would be perfect on these conditions,” Iyer said. “And we also wanted a right-hander to go on with Abhishek. So, that was one of the major reasons. And if you see, I was the only one out of all the left-handers who was a right-hander. As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to try a different combination which would be suitable for this particular game. And he’s (Samson’s) a gun batsman. He has won so many series for us in the past”.

“For me to thrive under pressure, to learn from these moments is definitely going to make me better going forward. And that’s my mindset right now. Not thinking much about how people are going to think about this particular series because good and bad is part and parcel of this game. Going forward, I need to be extremely positive enough in how I’m going to basically nurture everyone who is playing around me and especially in overseas conditions. We know we are going to play in Australia and many other cities before that. So, the best camaraderie to fit in these conditions is our goal and going forward, that is going to be our plan,” Shreyas Iyer concluded.