India conceded a series defeat to South Africa on Friday when the hosts registered a resounding victory in the second ODI in Paarl. The Indian bowlers disappointed once again as South Africa chased down a 288-run target with seven wickets and 11 deliveries to spare. A similar story continued in the batting lineup as well, where the middle-order – bar Rishabh Pant – failed to step up again.
Following the defeat, Rishabh Pant interacted with the media as he spoke in detail about India's performance in the second ODI. While it was an indifferent performance from the Indian bowlers, Bhuvneshwar Kumar's form remains particularly concerning. The senior Indian pacer ended wicketless and considerably expensive in both games (0/64 & 0/67), raising speculations over his place in the XI.
However, Pant believes that there is no need to look too much into Bhuvneshwar's performance, insisting that a long gap in India's ODI outings is a big factor behind such a performance. Before the series against South Africa which began on January 19, India had last played an ODI in late July last year against Sri Lanka.
"We are always looking to improve, I do not think there is much concern about Bhuvneshwar Kumar's form, we are playing an ODI series after a long time so we are just getting used to the momentum. We are disappointed to lose the series but we are looking to learn from this," said Pant while replying to an ANI query during a virtual press conference.
"Shardul batted well down the order in both the games, it is a positive for us. Venkatesh Iyer bowled for us today, there are a lot of positives that we can take from this series," he added.
{{/usCountry}}"Shardul batted well down the order in both the games, it is a positive for us. Venkatesh Iyer bowled for us today, there are a lot of positives that we can take from this series," he added.
{{/usCountry}}Earlier, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul played knocks of 85 and 55 respectively as India posted 287/6 in the allotted twenty overs. Shardul Thakur and Ravichandran Ashwin also played handy unbeaten innings of 40 and 25 respectively. For the Proteas, Tabraiz Shamsi returned with two wickets.
"I think the track was slightly on the slow side. I thought we had enough runs on this wicket, in the last game, batting was difficult in the second innings as the wicket got slower and slower. Today, it was the same but South Africa batted well in the middle phase and hence they were able to chase down the target," said Pant.
"I and KL had a good partnership in the middle, if we would have carried on, we would have gotten 15-20 runs more to the total," he added.