Auckland, March 23: The Kiwis went down tamely to India in the first Test mainly because they were an inexperienced side, according to New Zealand vice-captain Brendon McCullum. The collective experience of the hosts — 276 games — does not even add up to the 298 Tests just Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid have played.

"You can’t even begin to compare the status of our players versus their players, what they’ve achieved over a period of time," McCullum said. "I guess Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman have been in every situation that you can be as a batsman. For them it’s just a matter of replicating that each time they go out.

"We’re going out there trying to learn situations as they unfold. It can be tough but we’ve also got the blueprint to follow when we’re out there playing. It’s staring us in the face every time they bat. We have got the ability to learn pretty quickly from what they’ve done well," McCullum said.

Compared to the Indian pair of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, who have played a combined 90 Tests, the Kiwi openers have just four Tests between them. However, McCullum called for faith in them. "We don’t tend to play a lot of Test matches. If we can maintain a little bit of faith in the guys we’ve got here, I think we’ve got an incredible skill base within a pretty young side. If we can develop that and let these guys learn off the guys we’re paying at the moment we should be heading in the right direction," McCullum said.

The Indians surely have the upper hand going into the second Test. "They’ve got world class players and they’ll be tough to be beat but there are areas that we can improve on that will hopefully increase our performance in the match and if they’re not quite at their best it gives us a way that we can hopefully steal a march on them. We can’t allow them to get partnerships underway as quick as they did," McCullum said.

The wicketkeeper did not think New Zealand were out of their depth though. "I don’t think it’s a train smash. Obviously things haven’t been going well for us in terms of our Test cricket for a while. We have new personnel already involved in our team and some exciting players throughout the team.

"What we saw from Jesse the other day was pretty amazing. If we can develop that and include some fine performances from some of the senior guys as well you start to build up a bit better performance," he said.

He expects his side to take the Napier field with a better frame of mind. "It gives us an opportunity to try and rectify what went wrong in first game. We know we’ve got an opportunity to go out there and try and do what we didn’t do well in the last Test," McCullum said.