Ranchi (Jharkhand) [India]: England skipper Ben Stokes was proud of the way his spinners fought in the fourth Test, which the team lost, and admitted that he couldn’t have “asked anything more”.
England’s young spinners Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley put up a valiant effort and made India fight hard for each run as they chased a modest total and won by five wickets.
Bashir claimed back-to-back wickets to reduce the hosts to 120/5 and pull England back in the game.
“I think it was a great Test match. If you see the scoreboard, it’ll say India won by 5 wickets, but it doesn’t give credit to the way things unfolded, the ebbs and flows on every single day. I can only be proud of my team, we ‘ve had some inexperienced spinners (Bashir and Hartley), but I’m proud of their efforts, they came here without a lot of exposure and the way they kept bowling, I can’t ask for anything more,” Stokes said after the game.
“Part of my captaincy is allowing the young guys to revel and the freedom to play in some difficult and intimidating conditions in India. I am a massive Test cricket fan, the numbers of youngsters coming along in both teams sets things up nicely for the future of Test cricket. Bashir, what a story, what a journey, taking eight wickets including a 5-fer against India after having hardly played a lot of cricket is superb. You want to win series, you want to play and win cricket matches,” Stokes added.
England’s downfall in the Test came on Day 3, when Ravichandran Ashwin spun England completely out of the game and restricted them to a score of 145.
Stokes talked about that period and admitted that it was hard to deal with the quality of India’s three star spinners.
“If you look yesterday, anything was possible, it was incredibly difficult batting against the spinners (Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep), scoring became difficult and so was rotating the strike. We knew the pitch wouldn’t get any better, as we saw today. I don’t think the criticism of Joe Root has been fair, the sheer amount of cricket he’s played, got 12,000 Test runs. He’s incredible. I’ve been here for a couple of years (as captain) and my message is simple. The only thing I can say is we left nothing on the field, we’ve fought hard and I’m happy with that,” Stokes stated.
On Day 4, Dhruv Jurel and Shubman Gill put up a 72-run stand to pull the hosts out of a difficult situation and steer India towards victory. India are have clinched the series and are now 3-1 up with one more Test to be played between the two teams.
