New Zealand were in at the deep end

Well, that didn't go to plan. At all. Three-zip at the coin toss. No individual hundreds. Three losses. Sickness, injury and some calls for an inquiry into the coaching and preparation for the tour.

Heading into this Test series, a historic one for India, given the first match was their 500th Test and the third one was at a new Test venue, there would have been some realistic and some lofty expectations around the New Zealand changing room and among the squad. Perhaps also thoughts of spoiling India's party. More than likely there would have been talk of three individual hundreds, 300-plus scores in all innings, 20 wickets in two Tests, at least two drawn Tests, and if they got the "moments" right, one win - and of course, win at least one toss, hopefully two!

No personal hundreds. Brendon McCullum scored more in one innings against India than the whole New Zealand team did in any of their batting innings in this series. No draws. Missed a lot of the big game-changing moments. And not even one damned coin-toss win - Come back, Bmac, your Test toss success record of 37.5% is forgiven!

Listening to former Indian allrounder (he has a Test ton) Ajit Agarkar on his impressions of the New Zealand batting on ESPNcricinfo was to hear that New Zealand got worse as the series went on - they went backwards.

I think it's fair to say the batting did go backwards, and not just statistically, as the series went on. Why? And is that all bad news? I don't think so.

Backwards to go forward. I'm hoping so.

Every now and again, the Bible throws up an aphorism. Proverbs 13:20 says: "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." Basically you are only as good as the company you keep.

Firstly New Zealand don't have, and therefore can't play on, pitches that do what Indian pitches do. This means New Zealand don't have spinners who do what Indian spinners do. Which equates simply to the fact that New Zealand's batsmen can't do what Indian batsmen can do. The company you keep.

Jeetan Patel, virtually straight to India from a hugely successful wicket-taking season in the UK, wasn't as effective a wicket-taker as hoped. Good, consistent, could keep the Indian batsmen quiet, but taking wickets, making batsmen make mistakes - those things weren't quite in his arsenal.

Indian batsmen are better to spin. They play differently. Forward, and back - a long way back - often playing the line of the stumps with the bat, pads out of the way. Indian batsmen are used to playing spin bowling that spins. Spins big, grips, rips, bites and jumps. New Zealand batsmen are, because of the pitches that are used in domestic cricket, used to the subtleties of flight, pace and drift - the deception through the air, not the violence off the pitch.

I was never a Test-quality batsman. I learnt to play spin by playing Tests. I had two options that I learned on a tour to Sri Lanka: defend (small step forward and bat as close to where the ball pitched as possible) or sweep. It's all I had. So, one option to prevent me from getting out, and I might be able to sneak a single here or there if it brushed the edge with soft-enough hands; and the other a possible scoring option if the delivery was outside of my eyeline (outside off stump) and it wasn't delivered too flat or quick.

If I tried to do anything different, I'd normally end up in trouble. I once went back to a delivery that pitched outside leg - my plan was to just "kick it"; it jumped, and I wore it, no shot offered, squarely in the box. It was time to rethink. The point here is that I had to learn to play that kind of spin, on those kinds of pitches, in a Test match.

New Zealand defended well and showed aptitude for the task in the first Test. But as the series went on, the batting changed. I also think the Indian bowling got better, but the New Zealand batting, from outside looking in, didn't improve.

I genuinely believe the New Zealand batsmen were making changes - trying to do it differently, better, more the Indian way. Practising and experimenting to not get so far forward, and thus locking themselves into only defence, they were trying to get back further and open up scoring shots through cover-point and midwicket. They swept less, they stayed taller. They just weren't good enough. There just wasn't enough time.

Is a Test match the right time to be doing this? Is there any better time, given the bowlers and conditions? The issue is, the process takes time. Learning to play that kind of quality spin, on those kinds of pitches, it means learning and practising in a Test. Only so much you can do and so good you can get practising in the nets against your own spinners and the net bowlers.