England captain Ben Stokes and coach Brendon McCullum faced their first Test series loss since assuming leadership positions in 2022, when they revolutionized the England team’s approach with their aggressive style of batting known as 'Bazball'.
On Monday, February 26, Team India handed Stokes and his team a five-wicket defeat in the fourth Test at the JSCA International Stadium Complex in Ranchi to clinch the home series with a 3-1 lead in the ongoing five-match Test series. The final Test will be played in Dharamshala from March 7.
Despite the Test series defeat, England captain Stokes expressed satisfaction in his team’s ability to compete against India on their home turf and deliver quality Test cricket.
Ben Stoke said at the post-match presentation: “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 it happened.”
The skipper continued, “I can only be proud of my team, we ‘ve had some inexperienced spinners (Shoaib Bashir and Tom 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.”
Speaking on giving chances to youngsters in the series, Stokes noted: “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 set things up nicely for the future of Test cricket.”
On the Ranchi pitch, England captain stated: “If you look yesterday, anything was possible, it was incredibly difficult batting against the spinners (Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav), scoring became difficult and so was rotating the strike. We knew the pitch wouldn’t get any better, as we saw today.”
Stokes also came to out in support of Joe Root, who has not been scoring consistently on the India tour.
He said, “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. So is Bashir, what a story, what a journey, taking 8 wickets including a 5-fer against India after having hardly played a lot of cricket is superb.”
He signed off by saying, “You want to win series, you want to play and win cricket matches. 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.”
(With PTI Inputs)
