NEW DELHI: India's 30-run defeat to South Africa in the first Test at Eden Gardens has left the former batter Cheteshwar Pujara completely perplexed, unwilling to accept that transition is the reason behind the team's loss.

After India were bundled out for 93 while chasing 124, Pujara criticised the batters' approach on a surface offering variable bounce and turn from the very first day, though he also stressed that the responsibility for the defeat did not rest on the batting unit alone.

"I don't buy this that India are losing at home because of transition. I can't digest that," Pujara said on JioStar. "If you lose in England or Australia because of transition, it could be acceptable. But this team has the talent and potential. You look at the first-class record of all the players - Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Shubman Gill... Washy [Washington Sundar] batted at No. 3 in this game - all their records are so good. Still if you lose at home that means something is wrong.

"If you had played the same match on a good wicket, there were much better chances of [India] winning. How do you define Test cricket? On what kind of a wicket are your chances better of winning? On such tracks, your chances decrease and the opposition is at par with you. There's so much talent in India, even an India A side could beat South Africa. So if you say this loss is because of transition, it's not acceptable."

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Pujara said that while India's batting failed, the real issue was poor preparation for a deliberately tough pitch on which no one from either side found run-scoring easy.

"You can't just blame the batters on this kind of a wicket because firstly if you want to play on such wickets, your preparation has to be different," Pujara said. "Gauti bhai said they asked for this kind of a wicket but it wasn't easy to bat on. Look at the stats of both teams - only one batter scored a fifty so it shows it wasn't a good wicket.

"If you want to play on such tracks, your batters have to be prepared accordingly and it didn't look like they were prepared. On such wickets, you have to play different kind of shots, like rely more on sweeps, play a little positive, try to move the scoreboard. But there was an expectation that this wicket would be a bit decent, it would have some turn, and you can bat well and score runs. But this wicket wasn't like that. If the Indian team wants such turning wickets where the ball turns from ball one, then the batters' approach will have to be different."