"When players become bigger than game, the team suffers"- Top 10 funny memes after India's embarrassing batting collapse in 3rd Test vs New Zealand
Team India batters faced the wrath of fans after yet another failure in the Test series against New Zealand. The batting lapses proved costly as New Zealand registered a 25-run win in the third Test on Sunday and became the first team to whitewash India in a three-match Test series in their home conditions.
New Zealand set a decent target of 147 for India in the final innings of the third Test after adding three more runs to their total in the morning session of Day 3 at the Wankhede Stadium. It was sufficient as Ajaz Patel (6/57) and Glenn Phillips (3/42) ran through the Indian batting line-up and bundled them for 121 in just 29.1 overs, utilizing the spin-friendly conditions.
Rishabh Pant (64) hit a blazing half-century and tried his best to take his side close to the target, while all the others struggled to put the bat to the ball.
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli had a horror series with the bat, scoring 91 and 93 runs across six innings, including a half-century each. The youngsters also failed to step up and take responsibility, which resulted in India's first home Test series loss in 12 years and their first-ever clean sweep loss in three or more Test series at home.
Fans were disappointed with veterans Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and other batters for their poor performances against New Zealand. They expressed their reactions by sharing hilarious memes on X.
One of the fans wrote:
"When players become bigger than the game, the team suffers."
Here are some of the best memes:
"We failed collectively as a unit"- India captain Rohit Sharma after series loss vs New Zealand 2024
At the post-match presentation, Indian skipper Rohit Sharma reflected on the reasons behind the series loss against Zealand, saying:
"Losing a series, losing test matches is never easy. Something that is not easy to digest. But then, we did not play our best cricket, we did not play well and New Zealand played better than us. The target was chasable too but we just simply did not apply ourselves, we lacked application. There are certain ideas that I go into bat with but it did not come off in this series, it does not look good when it does not come off."
He added:
"Those guys (the youngsters) really showed how to bat on these tracks, we have been playing on these tracks for the last 3-4 years but then as I said we did not play our best cricket, we tried certain things but that did not come off. I was not at my best in leading the side as well and with the bat too. We failed collectively as a unit."
The Rohit Sharma-led side will next travel to Australia for the five-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test series. The tour will commence on November 22 with the first Test in Perth.