India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate admitted they could have played another spinner after suffering a seven-wicket loss against New Zealand at Rajkot on Wednesday. The Kiwis were able to chase down 285 runs comprehensively after Daryl Mitchell and Will Young scored 131 and 87 runs respectively.

Meanwhile, India added Nitish Kumar Reddy to their playing XI after Washington Sundar was ruled out with an injury. Ayush Badoni had replaced the off-spinner in the squad and India didn’t add Axar Patel to the squad.

Kuldeep Yadav returned with expensive figures of 1-82 in his quota of 10 overs whereas Jadeja bagged 0-44 in eight overs he bowled in the second game.

Ryan ten Doeschate said in the post-match press conference, “You know, to bring Ayush [Badoni] into the squad at the very last minute with Washi going down in the game, we thought Nitish should be better suited on this track. And obviously, looking at the way the New Zealand spinners bowled, we could have done with another spinner tonight. But whenever we’re putting teams together, the main message is it’s what we put out there, not who we put out there.”

The former Dutch batter said India would want to bowl a bit better than what they did at Rajkot in the second game.

“We probably want to bowl a little bit better than we did tonight, particularly spinners, like you say, about lengths. But we’ll go back and look at those lengths in more detail. But it’s never just one reason for losing a game. There’s a lot of different things going into that loss tonight.”

Will Young and Daryl Mitchell added 162 runs off 152 balls to seal the same for the tourists.

The third ODI between India and New Zealand will be played at Indore on Sunday.