Former England opening batsman Geoffrey Boycott has criticized Ben Stokes' team for continuing after India rejected their offer of a draw on the final day of the fourth Test in Manchester.

India started their second innings 311 runs adrift after losing 2 wickets in the first over alone. However, they rallied thanks to some aggressive batting from KL Rahul (90) and Shubman Gill (103) and their 188-run partnership.

With their wickets, England attempted to rally, but India's 425/4 and eventual draw put an end to their ambitions with the 203*-run partnership between Washington Sundar (101*) and Ravindra Jadeja (103*).

Ben Stokes handed the Indian batter the opportunity to end the match in a draw when the final required hour of day five started, with Jadeja at 89* and Sundar at 80*. The surprised England captain threw a fit and argued with the umpires when the Indian batter, who was almost at their milestone, refused to comply.

“What goes around comes around. England were gobby enough when it suited them, so you can’t blame India for wanting to stay on and allow two batsmen who had worked their socks off to reach their hundreds. If you give it, like England does, then you have to be able to take it. I could hear them through the stump mics chipping away at India, so why should they be nice to them and agree to go off when England have had enough?

These India players are tough cookies. They do not take a backward step. There is no way I would have let anyone drag me off on 89 after I had worked hard all day to save the game for my team. Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar deserved their hundreds. They left the ball well, played with the full face of the bat, and defended their wickets at all costs. Well done,” Boycott noted in his Telegraph column.

Not just Stokes who asked Jadeja, ‘you want a hundred against Brook and Duckett?’, his other team-mates too had piled on. Harry Brook would sledge – “F*&#ing hell, Washi, get on with it”. Pacer Jofra Archer too chipped in with: “If you wanted a hundred, you should have batted like it earlier,” he would say. Opener Zak Crawley said: “If you shake our hands, it’s done.” And Ben Duckett couldn’t keep quiet. “How long do you need, an hour?”.

Boycott also made a point about mentioning the sledging that can occasionally turn sour, as it has done in this series.

“I’m not sure what it is with modern players. You hear a lot of them mouthing off. It never really happened when I was playing. It will carry on at the Oval and India will go there thinking they got a win at Old Trafford,” Boycott wrote.

The former opener talked about how England's bowling vulnerability was shown during the fourth Test match at Old Trafford. Boycott was uncertain about Archer's physical condition for the last Test match at London's Oval.

“You learn more from failure than you do from success. And we failed to bowl India out. The draw highlighted the deficiencies in our bowling. If you think about it, when your best bowler in both innings is the England captain, who is a batsman-bowler, something is not right. It was a tremendous effort from Ben Stokes, but apart from Jofra Archer at times, the rest were ineffective.

It was obvious in the second innings that he was puffing and blowing a bit. It is not surprising after four years out of Test cricket. You can have all the nets in the world, but that is not like bowling 89 overs in two Tests. They want to think carefully about playing him at the Oval and remember why he got injured in New Zealand when Joe Root was captain. When you have a weapon like Jofra, you need to be cautious. Don’t expect too much too soon from him,” he wrote.

He finally summed up the fourth Test thus: “The pitch was the winner at Old Trafford, but it did set off some alarm bells about England’s bowling.”

(The Telegraph inputs)