India captain Virat Kohli raised questions about the commitment of Team India after the series loss to South Africa, saying that the manner of the defeat and tendency to repeat mistakes was simply intolerable.

During the post-match press-conference after facing 135-run defeat in Centurion, Kohli said, “At the end of the day one team has to lose. As a team, you always try to win. You can accept defeat but not the way we played, the way we let the advantage slip out of our hands, which is not acceptable from a team’s point of view, So many soft dismissals hurt us a lot. Because you work so hard, prepare for a match, get into good situations, shift the game towards you, and then the momentum shifts because of these mistakes. We have repeated these mistakes in both matches. That feels very bad as a team.”

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Kohli also pointed out that the blame of defeat surely goes to the batsmen as they failed to deliver in key situations and the team to failed to build any solid partnerships. He described, “You need guys to put their heads down when the partnerships have gone to 60 and 70 and try to make it into 100 or 150 to give the team the best chance of winning a Test match or being in a solid position. When we did well in Australia, we got 450 runs every first innings but our partnerships were massive. South Africa did not have many partnerships, but whatever they had, one big partnership was always there and that was the key to them consolidating those situations and they deserved to win the series.”

The captain also demanded an honest introspection for the players about the mistakes they made and each individual needs to reconsider. He said, “We have not come here to play the way we have done. I’m not going to sit here and try to comfort anyone. We need to be hard on ourselves. We need to ask ourselves if we are giving 120 per cent for the team every time we bowl a ball or play a ball or field a ball. We should be reflecting on all our decision-making and all the actions that we have made in this game and the previous game and act upon them. Individuals have to sit and reflect on these things themselves. It is something we definitely need to take into account and sit down and discuss as a team.”

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When asked if there was too much dependency of batting on him, Kohli said, “I don’t think so. No one in the change room thinks like that. There are 11 guys in the field, I try to do my best and so does everyone else. Sometimes another batsman plays through the innings but that doesn’t mean that they are too dependent on that particular player. So, everyone has contributed to the team at different times, you can’t win games of cricket with one or two people.”

Kohli concluded by talking about Team India not playing practice games, he said, “In Test cricket, it does not matter where you are playing. Teams have beaten us at home at times but these conditions (at Centurion) are something that we are used to playing at and we should have certainly done better than what have. South Africa collectively was a much better team than us regardless of pitches we played on. Their bowlers put relentless pressure on us. As a batting unit, after losing a few wickets, they would string in a partnership. They showed more character than us.”