The Davis Cup away loss to Korea showed that India still relies on Leander Paes to win singles matches, coach Nandan Bal said on Sunday.
India went down 1-4 to Korea in Changwon, Korea, after Rohan Bopanna and Prakash Amritraj lost their reverse singles rubbers to Hyung-Taik Lee and Jun Woong-Sun respectively.
India now play Pakistan in the first play-off after the subcontinental rivals lost to Chinese Taipei 3-2 in another first round promotional tie.
Bal said India needs to quickly unearth some singles talent and till then would have to look up to captain Paes to deliver the goods.
"It is clear that one doubles point is not getting us anywhere. Having said that, Leander himself has another two years in him. We will have to look to him in the next two years, and, hopefully, by that time we will have a few players," Bal said from Korea.
Bal said that Paes did not play himself against Korea because the captain thought the youngsters, Bopanna and Amritraj, were in better form and shape than himself.
"It was just that he was not ready; he has never ruled himself out of playing singles. You must remember he played the opening match against Ubzekistan," Bal said.
Bal said Bopanna opened strongly but had to bow to the might of 89th ranked Lee, 6-3, 6-1, 6-2.
"Rohan was outplayed. Lee was the best player in the tie," he said. "Rohan played a good first set.
"He was right up with Lee till 3-3 and was up 30-15 when one bad point from him changed the game. Lee went 4-3 up and from there he stepped up his game."
Bal said a combination of complacency and poor form let Amritraj down in the dead rubber, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 to Jun Woong-Sun.
"Prakash played a bad first set but got back in the second. In the third, he left the fight back too late," the coach said.
"In the third set, he was 5-5 but then became a little complacent. In sport, you must make the opponent fight back, but Prakash was always catching up with his rival."
India have now lost all their four away ties to Korea. And that Sun was the hosts' fourth choice singles player must hurt Amritraj more.
Bal, however, said the elements had a huge role to play.
"I won't say the players were lacking. The conditions played a big role. The same Koreans, we have beaten them all times when we played them on our soil," he said.
"It was tough to get going. It was freezing out there and took a lot of time to just get the fingers moving."
Bal also revealed that Harsh Mankad was not picked for the tie because the player did not make himself available for selection.
India have a 5-0 head to head record over Pakistan, whom they last played in 1973 at a neutral venue, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, owing to the post-war situation.
The previous tie was hosted by India and the venue for the first round play-off would in all probability be decided by the toss of the coin.
"The bottomline is the awareness has grown in Asia. Pakistan beat Thailand in Thailand last year and came close to beating Chinese Taipei today," Bal said.
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