Christchurch, Feb. 25: India may have been humiliated in the first Twenty20 match against New Zealand but captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is still smiling. Speaking after the match here on Wednesday, he promised his team would learn from the mistakes though as he pointed to the miscalculating batsmen being the reason for the defeat. Excerpts:

On the loss: I think most of our batsmen batted brilliantly but the mistake we committed was that we went with the momentum. Maybe one of the batsmen could’ve realised that we had got off to a flier throughout the IPL and T20 games we have seen that even if you after the bowlers for 20 overs, you don’t score more than 200.

So you have to realise whether you’re happy with the score of 180 or 190 or whether you look for those extra 25 runs which we don’t actually need and end up getting 160-odd which is difficult for the bowlers to defend in conditions like these and on wickets that are placid.

On India’s total: It depended on the start New Zealand would have got because the wicket was quite good for batting, maybe three or four overs it would have done a bit under the lights but they got a good start though they didn’t get off to a flier like us. One thing is for sure, in T20 we need wickets in hand at the end and that’s what they did.

On playing a seamer less: This is the kind of team we’ve always played with — an extra spinner or a part-time spinner has contributed. With an extra seamer the batting order is not as long and as deep as you would prefer in a T20 game. I was quite happy with the combination we played.

On the batsmen’s mindset: One of the key things was to go into the middle with a blank mind, without a target. We wanted to play according to the merit of the ball, it was not a conscious effort to go after the bowlers and hit those big sixes.