Senior players must own up responsibility for New Zealand series loss, says Karthik

 Rather than pointing fingers at coach or underpeforming juniors, responsibility of India’s Test series loss to New Zealand should fall on the senior members of the Indian team, says former wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik.

India were beaten by 113 runs in the second Test in Pune to concede their three-match series after losing the first two games. It was the Rohit Sharma-led team’s first loss at home since losing to England in 2012-13 after 18 consecutive series wins.

Staring from skiper Rohit, senior members of the team including star batter Virat Kohli and leading spinner Ravichandran Ashwin underperformed. The runs dried up for Rohit and Kohli while Aswin and his spin partner Ravindra Jadeja couldn’t provide breakthroughs.

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t it (the onus of the series loss) be the senior players? They will look at themselves and say, ‘What could we have done better?’ I don’t think they have run away from it,” Karthik said on Cricbuzz.

“If you can celebrate the highs and the fans enjoy how important they are, when the team wins, then when the losses happen, and the brick bats are thrown at you I think they will have the courage to face it.”

Karthik said his former team-mates would admit that their performances was not upto the mark and then would seek to make amends immediately in the third and final Test of the series.

“If you go and ask each one of them personally, what they think of the series I don’t think they’ll have great things to say about how the whole team played, and it is only but fair to ask them questions about what can be done better for future of Test cricket in India and for Indian Test cricket,” he said.

“So, knowing them personally, and I do know each one of them personally. They will say that they didn’t have the best series. The question then becomes what do they need to do to get better and it is a very very current question to ask.” he detailed.