India vs New Zealand | Always knew 200 was not an easy target to chase, says Rohit Sharma

The Indian cricket team succumbed to an embarrassing loss at the hands of New Zealand in the opening match of the T20I series in Wellington on Wednesday. This was their second loss from three matches in the limited-overs format in the absence of captain - Virat Kohli. Kane Williamson & Co. defeated the visitors by a huge margin of 80 runs today.

Stand-in India skipper, Rohit Sharma, admitted that he always knew that chasing down a target of 200+ was going to be an uphill task. Sharma was dismissed after he scored just one run in the opening game of the three-match series.

"We were outplayed in all three departments actually. We always knew 200 is not going to be an easy chase. We kept losing wickets, that kept throwing us out of the game. We have chased 200-run targets in the past. But when you don't have a good partnership while chasing big totals, it's always wicket. Us as a team we have chased down the targets, that's why we are playing with eight batsman. We needed that one big partnership which we failed to do," Sharma revealed at the post-match interview, reported Cricinfo.

Meanwhile, home team captain Kane Williamson lavished praise on his side who put in a dominating performance against high-flying India as opener Tim Seifert impressed with the bat. Willamson further spoke about the national women’s team who also won their opening match against the Indian women’s team earlier.

"Fantastic performance all around. One of the complete performances you search for. Seifert was excellent. The bowling performance was outstanding. We had runs on the board but bowling and fielding were outstanding. 

"[On the women's game] It was a great game. Throughout the series the two teams have followed a similar trend. Hopefully, they can do that in the next game and we can follow it up," Williamson said at the post-match interview.

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