In a seemingly puzzling move, Rohit opted to bat, picking three spinners and just two fast bowlers, despite the first day being inundated by rain and the pitch being covered for almost two days.

“What if we put a little pressure on ourselves? We want to play well Well, and we found ourselves in a situation where we were bowled out for 46 runs. As a captain, it definitely hurts to see that number, but in 365 days you will make two or three bad decisions.

India named three spinners in their XI – R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav – and left out fast bowler Akash Deep, who played the two Tests against Bangladesh last month. The pitch turned out to provide plenty of support for the fast bowlers and India were reduced to 36 for 6 by lunch.

Rohit said the reason for selecting three spinners was the plain appearance of the pitch and the fact that Kuldeep had success on flat surfaces.

“Look, we felt like there wasn't a lot of grass on the field. We thought it would do everything it needed to do in the first few training sessions and then it would alternate as the game progressed,” he said. “That's how it is when we played in India, the first session is always critical and then the wicket tends to settle down and that's when the spinners come into play.”

“As I said, there wasn't much grass so we felt the reason for including Kuldeep was because he bowled on flat pitches and used wickets so we expected the pitch to be a bit flatter, as it turned out. So “clearly a misjudgment of the playing field.”

Another point of discussion was that Virat Kohli batted at No. 3 for the first time since 2016 because Shubman Gill was unfit to play. In six previous innings at No. 3, Kohli had scored just 97 runs at an average of 19.40. Those numbers took another hit when he fell for a 12-ball duck and turned a rising throw from William O'Rourke into leg gully. Rohit said Kohli moved up to avoid disturbing the players below him.

“The experienced players are the ones who have to take on that extra responsibility and this time it was Virat. He was the one who was ready to do it (batting at No. 3),” Rohit said. “We asked him if he can do the No. 3 slot because Sarfaraz (Khan)… we also wanted to give Sarfaraz the position where he usually bats at four and five, maybe at six.”

“But we didn’t want to change Rishabh and KL (Rahul) and that’s why Sarfaraz went with four and Virat went with three. It's actually a good sign, we have players who are stepping up and taking on this responsibility and rising to the challenge. It's a good sign that KL is in sixth place after a long time, so we want to keep him there.

Despite India's tough day, Rohit was in a good mood and opened the press conference with a joke: “chalao talwaar” (Draw your swords). It was also unusual for an Indian captain to face the press during a Test at the end of such a day and Rohit admitted they had to dig deep to come back after New Zealand were 134 and seven ahead came to the finish, wickets in hand.

“I think for us to stay in the game, we don’t want to let them get away,” he said. “(They scored) Way too many runs, obviously they're 180, so that's about 140 runs (134), so (keep them) as few as possible. The wicket seems to be settling down a bit so we're expecting the pitch to behave like this in the second over and see if we can make a game out of it.