Day five of the first Test between India and England at Nottingham was washed out which resulted in a draw. The Test was evenly balanced with India needing 157 runs to win with nine wickets in hand on the final day.
Former India pacer Zaheer Khan admitted that India was favorites to win on the final day but said that Joe Root’s England might feel they had a fair chance of a victory too.
He said that India should take the confidence of the first four days into the rest of the series. He also said that it was not a day-five pitch because of frequent rain interventions throughout the match.
"If you are in the Indian dressing room, you should definitely think you were in control and could have won this match. If the series reaches a point where the players feel self-doubt, then they can certainly look back at this performance and this Test was successful from that point of view. If you see, because of the rain breaks, the wicket wasn't the fifth day one...if they had played for the whole day, India had more chances to win this match,” Zaheer Khan said on Cricbuzz Chatter.
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The former cricketer added that both teams will look to take positives and some learning from the first match.
"The shorter the game time, the better it would have been for England because of the conditions, required run-rate, and an opportunity to set attacking fields. But all you can do right now is look at the positives and what learnings you can take from here.
Both dressing rooms will be in that kind of mood and perhaps Indian chats will be about how England got a bit lucky because of the rain while the English dressing room will say they had the bowling ability to win the game," Zaheer Khan added
Zaheer Khan also spoke about the possibility of reserve days in future Test matches in order to force a result.
"It's a good thought. If the result is possible then you can think about it. But wasn't there another topic being discussed that 5-day Tests should be reduced to four? (chuckles) Rules keep changing. At the moment, we can just stick to the rules we have. When there are such games then one always longs for that extra day but if one's team was lagging behind the match then they would have probably been happier without a reserve day," he signed off.
