Pujara: 'We haven't fielded well'

"We are having a chat about it and we will assign a few players, throughout the away series. We will prepare a few players who will be standing at the slips," Pujara said.

India's captain Virat Kohli, second right, and Cheteshwar Pujara, right, watch teammate Ajinkya Rahane, left, field the ball during the fifth day of the third Test against Sri Lanka.

India’s shoddy fielding in the slips needed to be addressed, according to Cheteshwar Pujara.

“We are having a chat about it and we will assign a few players, throughout the away series. We will prepare a few players who will be standing at the slips. We will discuss when we reach SA but we are already talking about that,” Pujara said.

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“To be honest we haven’t fielded well.  At the same time there have been injuries where openers have missed out. Someone like (Murali) Vijay, who used to be at first slip didn’t play due to injury for six months.  So we had to replace Vijay. I admit we haven’t taken many catches but we will definitely get better at it.  We have put in a lot of hard work in our fielding. We know catching is very important. All players standing in the slips are taking 50 to 100 catches during practice sessions.”

The lack of wear and tear in the pitch was a reason for the bowlers not being able to pull off a victory. “Overall we have really bowled well in this Test match especially looking at the wicket. We were expecting this wicket to deteriorate a bit more on day four and five, may be because of the weather, it was a flat wicket. There was not much help for spinners in the last two days. But our fast bowlers and spinners bowled really well,” Pujara said.