Sourav, this is a familiar story. One-up in Zimbabwe, one-all in Sri Lanka, one-up here, but we didn't win any of these series...
Yes, it is disappointing. You come close to winning the series and mess it up in the last Test. It's really disheartening and depressing sometimes. Well, you've got to look at the positive side. At least we've come close to winning the series. It's going to happen sometime.

You've talked about mental toughness…
I think it's got to be in the mind because we won a Test match, which means we have the ability. If you didn't have ability, you wouldn't have won the Test. I just didn't think we kept the intensity up. We didn't stand up and deliver at the crunch, on days that were deciders for the series.

Do we need help on the mental side?
I had an experience with a psychologist in 1993 in England. That helped me a lot. But it's very difficult for me to say whether it will help the team or not. I think at this level, when you've been there for some time, you should start training your mind. It's not the question of training your abilities. That is there.

We should also learn to take a lot of confidence from our home wins. I was very happy to see the way the West Indies team celebrated after they beat us in Jamaica and the way people in West Indies cricket said that it was a big, big victory. In India it would have gone down as just another home victory. But I've always felt that a victory - whether it is home or away - is a win. A Test match hundred is a Test match hundred, whether you do it at Wankhede or at Ferozshah Kotla or Trinidad. Our boys should learn to carry that confidence abroad.

Let's talk about the turning points in this series. Day One at Barbados was huge.
I think Barbados was a fantastic wicket to bat on. Obviously, it had a bit of bounce and pace but that's what's going to happen on a first-day wicket. Das got out to the first ball of the Test match, which probably sent down unnecessary alarms. The run-out of Rahul Dravid was important. I was playing well, Rahul was playing well in the last two Test matches. That was an important partnership.

How did the dressing room react to that first day?
We knew that if we had to get back into the Test match, we had to get West Indies out for 250, then score big runs and put pressure on them in the fourth innings. Something like this had happened once – against New Zealand at Mohali. It was a wet wicket,they put us in and we were out for 90-odd. We got New Zealand out for 215 and then we came out and scored about 500. We knew we had to do something like that, but in the second innings also we got out for 300-odd.

At Antigua, how big was that third evening when Kumble could have so easily got Hooper's wicket?
I think at Antigua we were a bit unlucky. We had put runs on the board. The spinners had a lot of rough and cracks to utilise, as Anil's 14 overs showed. But Anil couldn't bowl because of the injury, and it was very difficult for three seamers on that wicket.

You could have put on more pressure with the bat. India reached 513 an hour into the third morning. Australia would have got that many by tea on the second day...
The problem is, we knew we were a bowler short. That makes a huge difference. You can't compare Australia with India. Someone like Adam Gilchrist comes in at No. 7 and scores runs at that pace. I could have asked the batsmen to play quickly and declared at 470 or 480 that evening, but I knew that Anil had broken his jaw.

At Jamaica, you won a good toss on a grassy wicket. What did our bowlers do wrong?
I don't think they put the ball in the right place. Zaheer fell ill after the first hour and he couldn't give his best. So we were a bit handicapped. We let the openers score 111 runs... it was always going to be difficult to pull the game back after that, although we did well to get them out for 422 after they were 246 for 1. It keeps coming back to the fact that we didn't deliver at the right time – the first morning in Jamaica, and the first day in Barbados.

Someone like Javagal Srinath, so good at Trinidad, seemed to have lost all steam by the end. What do you do in a situation like that?
Well, it's difficult for a captain to do anything once the game starts and you see that the bowlers aren't doing the job. When you see a green wicket you ask your bowlers if they are fresh and want to bowl. If they say 'yes, we'd love to bowl on a green wicket', you'd say, 'yes, we'll bowl then'. If they don't bowl well, there's nothing much you can do.

Rain was forecast for the last day. Couldn't we have sneaked in a draw if our tailenders had shown more application?
See, you don't know when the rain is coming. We knew there was 40 per cent chance of rain. Yet, at the end of the day we wouldn't have won the series – we would have drawn the series. We sent out a couple of messages to keep on batting. But it was too much to expect the tail to do the job with the second new ball around.

What are the gains from this series?
Not too many. I thought Zaheer and Ashish bowled well. In Jamaica, Bhajju bowled the best I've seen him bowl with the Kookaburra ball. Wasim looks a good player. Ratra looks good – but let's wait for a while.

What are the concerns?
The openers. We need some more consistent partnerships. And the lower order.

What is the lasting sentiment of the series?
We could have done better. Rather, we should have done better. I think this defeat should hurt everybody. It has to hurt everybody otherwise we won't see an improvement.

Rahul Bhattacharya is a staff writer with Wisden.com in India.

Subscribe to Wisden Asia Cricket
Subscribe to Wisden Asia Cricket in India

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd