If Anil Kumble weren’t heading the global panel keeping an eye peeled on cricket’s technical nitty-gritty, and pointing at the way forward, much of the predominantly Indian griping about the World Test Championship would have been bottled up so no one up top was rubbed up the wrong way.

It had less to do with our customary regional one-upmanship than conflicting personal ambitions, which were inevitable in the country bankrolling the game so lavishly. But India, the team, performed so very underwhelmingly in the rain-affected, stop-and-start final, losing by eight wickets to New Zealand at Southampton, that India, the country, could be said to be too numb to find fault with others in the wake of it.

It was, after all, the third match in the tournament between the two teams, with India finishing on the losing side on each occasion. Captain Virat Kohli was reduced to Kyle Jamieson’s bunny, with the New Zealand seamer bowling 84 deliveries to the Indian to concede but 30 runs in the WTC cycle and thrice giving him his marching orders, twice in the summit showdown itself. India’s middle-order batting averaged 24 in the match, with Cheteshwar Pujara looking as much at sea as his captain.

Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane looked composed while they lasted, but were outplayed when set. And the opener Shubman Gill, after so much noise made by some of India’s best-known icons of yesteryear, fell far short of the popular expectations stirred by the stellar magniloquence in the media.

Maybe, as the anatomy of the defeat is placed under further, closer scrutiny later on, people might also ask each other why, in dire need of what nowadays is called out-of-the-box thinking, Ravichandran Ashwin, who took both the wickets in the New Zealand second innings and topped the competition’s wicket-takers’ list, was given only 10 overs? Would a double-spin attack right from the beginning on a sixth-day track have helped? Remember, too, that despite India boasting a supposedly lethal pace attack, the first wicket in both essays fell to Ashwin.

Did dropped catches, precisely when India couldn’t afford them, hint at inadequate preparation or the recurrence of an old problem? As Kohli finds himself obliged to haul the assorted baggage now into the Test series against England, he must wonder where his team will find the skills to counter Anderson and Co. Kumble, in the ICC, was saddled with the task of pushing a square peg into a round hole. He was up against Covid-19.

Kohli, who had been the reason why Kumble had had to relinquish his role as India’s chief coach, was only leading his team in a final. He says there should have been two more matches in the final but no one is sure India would have won them.