Indian captain MS Dhoni blamed extras and the Indian new-ball bowlers’ failure to control the run-rate early on as the reasons behind India’s 19-run loss against New Zealand at the JSCA International Stadium, Ranchi on Wednesday.

Dhoni pointed out that India failed to get any partnerships going during their chase and is cost them dearly as the Kiwis levelled the series 2-2 ahead of the final ODI at Vizag on Saturday.

“I think we gave too many extras and too many runs early on. We could have done it still, with wickets in hand. It was quite similar to the Delhi game where we kept losing wickets. It was good to see the lower-order score runs, but wickets in hand would have been a good factor,” Dhoni said.

“I felt the wicket was best to bat on in the afternoon and it kept getting slower. The older ball was not coming on, but with partnerships, this total could have been chased because the runs weren’t too many.”

India, at 98/1, looked good to chase down the target of 261, but a flurry of wickets in the middle overs saw them reduced to 167/7.

But the Indian skipper refused to criticise his lesser experienced middle-order batsmen, despite their capitulation.

Youngsters Manish Pandey and Hardik Pandya, in particular, were guilty of going for the big shots and getting out with plenty of overs to go. Dhoni feels, with experience, the younger players will grow and the errors will disappear.

“The youngsters will learn. A few of them will look to play big shots, but they will play 10-15 games and learn their own way and figure things out for themselves. Cricket has evolved, the newer generation like to play the big shot,” he said.

“You cannot tell them not to, because then they will get into a shell and it is difficult to get out of that. They will learn that if you go over the in-field, you have chances of getting out. We will lose a few but they will learn, we must not put a lot of pressure on them.”