India is seriously missing Rohit who could changed the results of some of these matches since Rahul is clearly out of form recently. Players like Pant keep letting the team down again and again consistently.
The team is actually depending way more on lower order batsman like Thakur, Chahar etc in recent times which says a lot. This particular South African team keeps impressing me.
The team expects a lot more from their lower-order batsman because the top order doesn't seem to click at times. And at that time they seem to be so desperate. And this mostly is happening because the team has a lot of internal problems which is preventing them from performing at their best. These problems need to be fixed as soon as possible.
It is strange that you are blaming Pant. Actually he did much better than the other batsmen. Scored a total of 101 runs from three matches and let's not forget the fact that he is the keeper as well. Rohit would have made a difference? I don't know, because Shikhar Dhawan was also in good touch as the opener (169 runs from 3 matches). KL Rahul failed, both as a captain and as a batsman. A lot was expected from Shreyas Iyer, but he couldn't live up to those expectations. But I would say that the batsmen did more or less OK. It was the bowlers who failed - especially Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Shardul Thakur and Ravichandran Ashwin.
I have to say that in my opinion, Rohit is a better captain in comparison to Kohli or Rahul. Because of Virat, I think that he wins by his own performance, not because of crazy good captaincy. But Rohit is a better captain and makes better decisions.
And it's about the whole team failing to win, nothing came together for them to win. And I have to agree that the bowlers failed badly