England captain Joe Root has denied blaming the pitch at the newly-built Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad for his team’s embarrassing 10-wicket defeat against India in the day-night Test on Thursday (February 25).
The third Test of the ongoing four-match Test series between India and England ended inside just two days with both teams could score just 387 runs across the four outings in Ahmedabad.
England suffered a heavy defeat after they were bundled out for 81 in their second innings as India chased down 49 without losing a wicket to take a 2-1 lead in the ongoing Test series.
However, Root has admitted that pitch at the world’s largest stadium in Ahmedabad was “very challenging and very difficult to play on”, but refused to blame the surface for England’s batting woes, saying it’s not the players, rather the ICC to decide whether the Motera pitch is suitable for Test cricket.
Root said during the post-match virtual press conference, “I think that this surface, it's a very challenging one, is a very difficult one to play on. It is not for players to decide whether it is fit for purpose or not and that is up to the ICC. As players, we are going to try and counter what is in front of us as best as we can.”
The English captain, who claimed a career-best five-wicket haul and returned with the figures of 5/8 in the recent day-night Test, lamented the tourists missed the opportunity to get a big first-innings total, as they could score only 112 runs in their first innings in the pink-ball Test against India.
He further said if England would have scored 200 runs in the first innings, then the result could have been different, but the tourists missed the opportunity and it cost them the chance to make it to the final of the ICC World Test Championship and face New Zealand.
Root further explained, “We are disappointed; I feel we have missed an opportunity, more so in the first innings than anything. The position we found ourselves in at 71/2, we had a real chance to (score big).”
He signed off by saying, “In hindsight, if we would have got 200, that would have been a very good score on that wicket and the game would have looked completely different. We have got to get better and we are going to keep looking to find a way to scoring runs on surfaces like this.”
(With Hindustan Times Inputs)
