Following the 4-1 series loss in India, captain Ben Stokes admitted that England had been “outplayed by the better team in the series”. But the English skipper confirmed that his side won’t change their Bazball approach that had brought them so much success in the two years before arriving in India.
England had won only 1 Test match in the last 17 Tests under Joe Root’s captaincy, before Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum turned it around. England went two years without losing a series – home or away – which included a series win in Pakistan, and a come-from-behind 2-2 home Ashes draw.
They even won the first Test in Hyderabad, but India, despite missing a number of first-choice players, were simply too good to be beaten at home in a Test series. England’s batting has come under the scanner over the last three Tests; in their second innings in the last three Tests, they were bowled out under 200, and lost the last two Tests by huge margins.
Ben Stokes proudly claimed that the 4-1 loss in India won’t force any shifts in their methods, saying “we ain’t gonna let the last two years go to waste over this series in isolation.”
Ben Stokes explains batters getting out to aggressive shots
Among the Indian bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav ran the show in the first three Tests before R Ashwin came to the party in the last two. For England, only Zak Crawley breached the 400-run mark in the series, while three batters did it for India.
Over the last two Tests especially, a lot of England batters got out trying to play aggressive shots. Ben Stokes justified it by saying that the attacking shots were in response to the close-in fielders.
Stokes said at the post-match presentation, “When India get on top, especially with the ball, you see a lot of men come around the bat, and when you’ve got the quality bowlers that they do – Ashwin, [Ravindra] Jadeja, Kuldeep – you’ve got to find ways of getting the guys around the bat out of there. Sometimes that comes with risk. Risk doesn’t always pay off, but you get a couple of sweeps away and then you find you’ve only got one man around the bat. You’ve just got to be positive enough to be able to take that risk, and know that sometimes it can be your downfall.
“You can look and say, ‘could I have done something better?’ But when the intent and the application is there, with the real reason as to why you’re playing that shot, then you can’t really say too much else.”
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