Dinesh Karthik puts Rohit Sharma’s captaincy under the bus after team India’s horror show in Pune

The ripples of India’s series loss against New Zealand will probably remain for weeks to come. It was the first time in 12 years that the Indian team failed to win a test series at home, losing the first two matches of the 3-match test series with the Kiwis. While India put up a good fight in the first Test, the second one ended with them being bulldozed by the visiting team. After the Pune Test, the former India wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik did not pull back in his criticism of the captain Rohit Sharma.

Karthik does not believe that Rohit was an aggressive captain in Pune, as he was unable to keep up with New Zealand in terms of aggression and focus, which ultimately led to the loss for India

“Not at his best. I thought he had a very tough Test match, he did all he could. I could see there was a lot of pressure on him, add to the fact, that he did not get many runs as well. So overall, it was not a great Test match. He will reflect and think, ‘what could I have done better? Was I a reactive captain or a pro-active captain?’” Dinesh Karthik said on Cricbuzz.

Rohit could not make a significant difference while batting in both of the tests. In fact, he fared considerably worse with the bat for India in the first two Tests.

“There is a fine line, this Test match was one where he was chasing the ball a little bit. He tried his best with whatever he could, but you have to say it wasn’t the best game for either him or Team India,” he added.

And since the two losses sealed the series outcome, Rohit cracked a rather casual joke in the presser following the Pune Test and said that such a performance was allowed after being on top for twelve years.

“We are permitted a performance of that caliber once in every twelve years. If we were to keep on disintegrating like that, then we wouldn’t be able to keep winning our home games. There are high hopes. They say we have to win every game at our home and that is because of the way we play,” he said in the presser.