Brett Lee suggested India underestimated New Zealand due to their exceptional home record.© BCCI
Team India suffered a shock 0-3 defeat to New Zealand earlier this month, their first Test series loss at home in nearly 12 years. The Indian batters looked completely out of sorts against the Kiwis spin duo of Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel. The shock loss has now put India’s hopes of reaching a third straight World Test Championship (WTC) final in jeopardy. While analysing the result, former Australia pacer Brett Lee suggested India underestimated New Zealand due to their exceptional record at home.
“They went into the series thinking that we’ll just whitewash the Kiwis, thinking that’s going to be an easy series. And that’s no disrespect to the Kiwis. It’s just that India are so powerful, so strong on home soil. The Kiwis caught India off-guard,” Lee said on his YouTube channel.
Despite the loss, Lee claimed that India will be motivated heading into the Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia.
“This is a great learning curve for all out there. Probably not for Aussies because now they’ve got to understand that India will be much-better prepared. They are going to come in strong. They would have got a kick up the backside from their coach, Gautam Gambhir. This is atrocious, the way they played but they are still a team of champions. They have had a downfall over the last couple of weeks; it does happen in cricket,” he added.
Lee also urged star batters Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli to hit the “reset button”.
“When you have a couple of bad runs back-to-back, that’s when the pressure could set in. I guess the thing now is someone like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma just have to go back to the drawing board. Work on that technique, freshen up, get away from cricket as much as they can and then hit the ground running when they go to Australia, because I can promise you – these Australian fast bowlers will attack Rohit Sharma with that brand new ball.”
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