For the first time in the past one week, the India team management was in a state of worry before entering the post-match press conference. Soon after facing a shocking 76-run defeat to South Africa at the Narendra Modi Stadium here, the management geared up for damage control and accepted having loopholes in the side.Assistant coaches Ryan te Doeschate and Sitanshu Kotak accepted that the loss is ‘not digestible’ given the amount of cricket the India players have played.While Kotak called it an off day, Doeschate did a proper assessment of the result.“It needs a little bit of assessment and application. It’s a fine line between putting the reins and stopping guys from playing the way they play. But it’s come to the point now where there should be an intervention saying, ‘Guys, there’s a different way to go about a chase, even setting a score. We’ve spoken about it a lot, but we haven’t implemented it across the board. That’s cost us in some of the performances with the bat so far,” said Doeschate.After the massive defeat, India has to defeat Zimbabwe and the West Indies convincingly in their next two games to keep their semifinal hopes alive in the ICC T20 World Cup. The poor performance against the Proteas is worrisome for the Indian batters as the teams have come with a clear plan against them.”I think the biggest challenge is to find a way to play on wickets that are not the typical wickets we play on. They’re all fantastic players. So, do you stick or twist? You stick with the guys who we feel have performed really well over the last 18 months and who are maybe shy of a few runs now. Or do we twist and bring Sanju Samson, who’s also a fantastic player and obviously helps tactically with having a right hander at the top of the order. I’m sure that’ll be the talking point over the next few days,” said Doeschate.Perhaps Sanju’s absence was not a concern against South Africa, but dropping Axar Patel took all by surprise. “Gautam and Surya had a clear chat with Axar. He is a world-class player, everyone knows his quality and being the deputy of the team, he understood the discussion. The plan was to bring in Washington Sundar to bowl in powerplay, but it didn’t happen as Bumrah was right on target. Again, it was an on-field decision,” said Kotak.With a net run rate of -3.8, the hosts really need to plan for the upcoming matches. “It was a chase-able total, 180-185 can be chased on this wicket. The players are experienced, but it was just one of the off days. We have to introspect and come back with a plan, a better one,” added Kotak.He also discussed the poor run of Indian batters. “When a player is already down, you just can’t give him 15 things to work upon…that’s my coaching philosophy. Had it been a gap of 10-12 days, we could have worked upon various things. In the current situation, it’s better to support the player with better conditions and mental space. However, this was not the performance we expected. The loss of early wickets, the openers falling to off-spinners. In the next few days, we have a lot of work to do,” he added.”We felt the biggest threats were going to be Quinton de Kock, Ryan Rickelton and David Miller. When you can pick only one of the two options, we leaned towards someone who could bowl in the powerplay. Axar can bowl in the powerplay occasionally, of course. But we felt we’ve got Washington to a point where he’s found a way to be effective in that phase.””In a tournament like this, you want – and expect – players to understand that every decision is made with the best intentions: to pick the strongest XI for that particular game. I hope Axar saw it in that spirit.”