Australian pitches support wristy spinners and India did have one (Yuzvendra Chahal) but Rahul and Rohit were more eager to play Ashwin and Axar because they can bat. Just look at the number of wickets these guys took in this world cup. Furthermore Ashwin was lazy on the field. The openers are a burden to Indian side the problem is that you cannot drop both captain and vice captain. That is why now BCCI has decided to keep Hardik Pandya as the captain of T20 squad for the long term and have asked Rohit whether he would like to play in T20 matches the same goes for Virat Kohli too.
IMO, players such as Rohit and Virat should concentrate more on the test format. Hardick is the best choice for T20 captain at this point. But I don't know how much acceptable this will be for the senior players. T20 cricket is the major money churner and they definitely don't want to stay away from T20Is. And now with the departure of Sourav Ganguly, the BCCI officials will be wary to antagonize players such as Virat. We have around one and half years to go for the next edition of the T20 world cup. The selectors should focus on rebuilding the team before that.
This decision of not considering some senior players and asking a few legends whether they want to be part of the T20 squad by BCCI came after few big corporates like Mahindra and Reliance were not happy with the way India lost to England. BCCI doesn't want that kind of question mark on their authority. I am pretty much certain many concrete steps will be taken by them in coming days.