Ben Stokes urged England not to go into a “downhill spiral” after the most chastening defeat of his captaincy.
Yashasvi Jaiswal’s second successive double century helped India set a mammoth 557 target on the fourth afternoon of the third Test in Rajkot before England capitulated to 122 all out to lose by 434 runs.
As India celebrated going 2-1 up in the five-match series, which resumes in Ranchi on Friday, Stokes demanded England pick themselves up quickly after their heaviest defeat in terms of runs since 1934.
Despite admitting England came off second best in his 100th Test, Stokes believes poor implementation – rather than the attacking methods they have fostered in the last couple of years – was to blame.
He said: “We were outplayed. Did we go into our shells a little bit because of the situation? That’s not what we do. I don’t think we need to temper anything, we need to look at our execution this week.
“Losing games for England isn’t where you want to be but games are won or lost in the head. You’ve got to learn from disappointment but use it in a positive way, not let it eat you.
“I know that thinking too deep into certain things can send you on a downhill spiral. It’s about what we do the next two games.
“I just make sure all the emotion, all the disappointment there would be in that dressing room, make sure it stays there. We’ve got two games left and all I’m thinking about is winning this series 3-2.”
Joe Root is yet to reach 30 in six attempts and perished in the first innings to his specialised reverse ramp, which drew criticism from ex-England batters Sir Geoffrey Boycott and Michael Vaughan.
Root’s dismissal led to England collapsing from 224 for two to 319 all out and conceding a first-innings deficit of 126, which ultimately proved a major moment in the Test.
Stokes said: “Because he got out to it, it definitely was a turning point. I can understand why there would be frustration around that because of how good a player Joe is.
“It’s not a shot you necessarily see Test match players playing. But who am I to question a guy who has 30 Test match hundreds and nearly 12,000 Test match runs? I think he knows what he’s doing.”
Ahead of this Test, Stokes revealed he had made a “pinky promise” with England’s physiotherapist that he would not bowl on this tour following surgery on a longstanding knee injury in November.
He has not bowled competitively since the Lord’s Ashes Test in early July but he has been stepping up his recovery and has not ruled out the prospect of sending down a few overs at some point in India.
Stokes added: “I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no. I have progressed a lot faster than I thought I would. Me being me I’m always very optimistic about most things.
“That will be a more detailed chat with the medical team about what workload I have done to pass me off as not being a massive risk.
“I managed to bowl at 100 per cent in one of the warm up days here which made me feel pretty good.
“I felt like I could have bowled in the game but that would have been stupid. It’s a work in progress, I have a lot of workload to put through the rest of my body.”
While Ravindra Jadeja’s five for 41 helped bowl England out in 39.4 overs, Jaiswal amassed a stunning 214 not out as India racked up 430 for four before Rohit Sharma called him and Sarfaraz Khan in.
It was the first time a team had declared against England in the Bazball era and lent further credence to India having the next superstar on their hands.
Stokes added: “If I said I didn’t think it was any good that would be a rogue thing – he’s a great player to watch, I enjoy watching good players play, even when it’s against me. He’s very special.”
IPL: Mumbai Indians condemned to last-place finish after 18-run defeat to Super Giants
Rohit Sharma's half-century was not enough for Mumbai Indians as they slipped to an 18-run defeat to Lucknow Super Giants at Wankhede Stadium.
The defeat consigned Mumbai to bottom place in the Indian Premier League for the second time in the space of three seasons, after losing 10 matches this year.
LSG were also left to lament their misfortune, as despite reaching 14 points, they did not qualify for the play-offs.
KL Rahul's 55 got the ball rolling for Lucknow, but their innings was ebbing out until Nicholas Pooran's dazzling 29-ball 75 took them to 214-6, despite the efforts of Nuwan Thushara (3-28) and Piyush Chawla (3-29), who stepped up in Jasprit Bumrah's absence.
Rohit's 38-ball 68 set the tone for what looked set to be a promising Mumbai chase, as he struck 13 boundaries around a short rain delay.
However, Mumbai went from 88 without loss to 120-5 in the space of six overs, leaving the tail with too much of a mountain to climb.
Data Debrief: Lucknow miss out
While Mumbai sit bottom of the pile yet again, it is a case of what might have been for LSG, who for the first time in their three-season history, failed to make the top four.
Fourteen points is often enough to get over the line and into the play-offs, but their poor net run rate of -0.667 means they miss out.
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
