Lucknow, Mar 7 (IANS): Lack of match practice led to the Indian women's team losing their "rhythm" in the past one year in which they played no cricket, said vice-captain Harmanpreet Kaur on Sunday.

India lost to South Africa by eight wickets in the first ODI on Sunday.

"We didn't get any international cricket for a year. Apart from three IPL games we didn't get much time to work as a unit. As a team you need to spend time and get ready for any series," said Harmanpreet at the post-match press conference.

"Nowadays everybody is looking for a big total, every game we want to score more than 250 but for that you need some time and matches," she said.

Harmanpreet admitted that India could hardly get any partnerships going with bat or ball during the match and that they will have to find back the rhythm they had before the long break. Sunday's match was the team's first international fixture since the 2019 women's T20 World Cup semi-final against Australia in January 2020 and the first ODI since November 2019.

"In the past few years we had built a rhythm but we will need time to create that rhythm and next game we will try to do that as a unit," said Harmanpreet, who was playing her 100th ODI.

"When you are playing after a long time there are chances were you can collapse but they bowled well and we threw our wickets. As a bowling unit, there were no partnership, you need partnership whether it is bowling or batting," she said.