Indian cricket team vice-captain Rishabh Pant took to social media to post a strong message following the loss against England in the first Test encounter on Tuesday. The Shubman Gill-led side failed to defend a 371-run target as England registered a historic win at Headingley. “It is going to sting us for a while but we BELIEVE in bouncing back stronger,” he posted on Instagram. While there were 4 centuries from Indian batters in the match, weak bowling and fielding blunders did not help their cause. Gil also posted took to Instagram to post a message after the loss – “Every battle leaves you sharper”.

India captain Shubman Gill admitted the lower order collapse in both innings did cost them dearly during the five wicket defeat against England in the opening Test on Tuesday.

Despite vice-captain Rishabh Pant scoring centuries in each innings of the opening Tests and other key batters in openers KL Rahul, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Gill himself hitting their respective tons, India failed to get to bigger totals in both the innings and also dropped crucial catches. This is the first time in history of Indian cricket that a team lost a Test after five individual hundreds being scored by its batters.

India collapsed from 430/3 in the first innings to 471 losing seven wickets for 41 runs and in the second, they crumbled to 364 all-out from 333 for 4, losing six wickets for 31 runs.

“It was a brilliant Test match. We had our chances, we dropped catches and our lower-order didn’t contribute enough, but proud of the team and overall a good effort. Yesterday, we were thinking around 430 odd and declare but we lost six wickets for 25 runs (31),” Gill said during the post-match presentation ceremony.

“Unfortunately we didn’t score runs at the end which always makes it difficult. (It) just didn’t go our way in this match.” “That (lower-order contribution) was something we spoke about. (But) it (collapses) happened so quickly. (It) could be one of those things we have to rectify in the upcoming matches,” he said.

Gill defended his side saying it is a “young team” after a string of dropped catches in the match. Jaiswal alone dropped four catches.

“Definitely, chances don’t come easy on wickets like these. It’s a young team, (a) learning one and hopefully we will be able to improve on those aspects,” he said.

“(In) the first session we were quite spot on, didn’t give away many runs. It’s hard to stop the runs once the ball softens. Unfortunately some edges didn’t go our way. They took their chances after the ball got old. That happens in a game of cricket. You expect that everything won’t go your way,” he said while talking about the final day’s play in which England chased 371 to win.

(With PTI inputs)