India's standards in the field just haven't been the same of late, the ruthlessness Virat Kohli's team is known for very much in evidence with bat and ball, but not quite when it comes to fielding. "It's something we should definitely work on," fielding coach R Sridhar said a day off from the second ODI in New Zealand, but suggested that the lapses haven't been because of technical shortcomings.

"I think, post the World Cup, we had a good series in the West Indies, then the West Indies series at home is where we really dropped, we were average, to say the least. So from then on, we are trying to get better," he said at a press conference. "Definitely we haven't lived up to the standards as we did in the World Cup or even in the build-up to the World Cup in the last couple of years. It's something we should definitely work on."

During the T20I series that preceded these ODIs, which India swept 5-0, Kohli was critical of the fielders, saying at one stage, "I think fielding is one thing that we can improve on, just getting used to the ground dimensions and the ball snaking a bit." That hasn't quite happened. In the first ODI, which New Zealand won by four wickets, Kuldeep Yadav dropped century-maker Ross Taylor off Ravindra Jadeja when he was on 10, failing to get under the swirling ball off a top-edged sweep, and, later in the chase, Manish Pandey had a shy at the stumps and missed, conceding four overthrows (it would have run Tom Latham out had he hit). Both those lapses hurt India.

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"Manish took a chance, and he had to do it, come on! We needed a wicket at that time. You can bargain four runs for that wicket. And it was their best player at that time," Sridhar said. "These things happen, we can't look too deeply into that. But yes, definitely New Zealand is a difficult high-catching country. Having said that, it's not an excuse, that catch should have been taken. Maybe he [Yadav] was thinking about his previous over, it could be anything.

"It cannot be a technical aspect at all. Or, you never know… we were speaking to Kuldeep today, we spoke about it, so we are trying to get better. We were average, there's no doubt about it. And we can get better."

On the other hand, Kohli put in an excellent effort to run Henry Nicholls out when he was looking extremely dangerous at 78, the India captain swooping in from cover and under-arming the ball to hit the stumps.

"We do monitor their workloads, so we will be lying to ourselves if we say they are fresh as a daisy. They are not, because they are travelling and playing games. But the current fitness levels of this team is really good. So that, in turn, helps to recover from the workload or recover from the fatigue quickly, be fit on the park" R Sridhar

"If you see Virat's run-out of Nicholls the other day, it was purely speed which gave him the edge over the batter. Absolute pleasure to watch. The kind of intensity he brings to the field - I always tell the younger boys that he's the ready-made template for you to just copy him, watch him to see what he does," Sridhar said. "It's about wanting to go there and do well for a player. It's about preparing yourself off the field, mentally and physically, to go there and to be able to do what you really want to do.

"The buck doesn't stop inside the ground. There are a lot of things to be done outside the ground for a player to be playing at the intensity of Virat Kohli."

While Kohli, Jadeja and Pandey, especially, have set very high standards on the field, a largely young team has faltered on occasion. But what is the way out of the "downcurve"? And why isn't it going away as bad habits should?

"That's the nature of the current schedule, so we've got to take it, play around it," Sridhar said when asked if the lack of training days since landing in New Zealand could be a factor. "But, yes, we've hardly had a session during the entire T20 schedule. So there's not much we can put in in terms of technical work at the ground. We do have time before the game starts, and that's where we do some groundwork. Apart from that, we do have a look at videos to see what led to an error. It need not always be a technical error, every time there's a fumble or every time there's a dropped catch.

R Sridhar has a chat with Sanju Samson during a training session BCCI

"We need to know - it could be tactical, a positioning error, could be the mind not being in the right place, could be so many things which can lead to an error. We are trying to address that based on the feedback we take from the players. Our job is to give them all the information and give them the best options, and it's up to the player to take the best option he can to make him perform the best. It is a tight schedule, but it's not a complaint, it's not an error, we need to perform better.

"We do monitor their workloads, so we will be lying to ourselves if we say they are fresh as a daisy. They are not, because they are travelling and playing games. But the current fitness levels of this team is really good. So that, in turn, helps to recover from the workload or recover from the fatigue quickly, be fit on the park. But we do keep that in mind. I don't blame fatigue for any of the downcurve."

According to Sridhar, the fielders have all been given the freedom to be their own "captains" on the field and make a difference by thinking out of the box.

"We do have certain parameters, certain fielding KPIs, in the T20I game, or in the ODI game, or in the Test matches. We keep reminding the players about attention to the basic detail, doing the one-percenters right, and we keep telling the fielders - in a game which is so quick like in a T20 game - to be his own captain; he need not wait for the captain to move him, or the bowler to move him to a certain direction or a certain position," he said. "We tell him to think ahead of the game: you, as a fielder, captain yourself, see which way the breeze is, which way the batsman's tendencies to hit are, what are the bowler's plans… and position yourself accordingly.

"We empower the fielders so they become their own captain and take decisions on their own, because the captain has too much on his plate at a certain time. That's what we speak about, and we have a lot of one-percenters and we have a lot of KPIs that we try to tick off every game."