England skipper Alastair Cook feels England are still very much in the series

England captain Alastair Cook remained optimistic about his team’s chances in the series after suffering a crushing 246 run loss to India in Vizag on Monday. Cook took enough positives from the match and dreamt of a repeat of the 2012 series when they clinched the series 2-1 after going down 1-0.

Without a doubt, the toss had a major say in the outcome of the match but there were very certain areas which England didn’t execute to perfection. Especially Ben Duckett’s approach against spin was bemusing and with Stuart Broad being ruled out of the next Test due to the injury he suffered during the Vizag Test, there are lots of areas where England need to improve before the start of the 3rd Test from Saturday in Mohali.

Speaking on the prospect of losing the toss and batting fourth, Cook said, “We can all agree it was a good toss to win. Anyone could see that. The first day was the best day to bat. Even if you took our last innings by scoring rate… a bit irrelevant… you saw the scoring rates declined as opposed to the first day. It was a lot harder to score apart from the first day.

“And when you concede 450 runs and then to be 80 for 5, it’s a long way back. That is what cost us the game. From that moment on, I thought the way Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes stopped the rot that night, they faced 80-odd balls, showed some character and we built on that on day three, day four. But in these conditions when you get behind the pace of the game, it’s very hard to recover. We did show some good skill and fight to do it but you leave yourself a big hole to get out of”.

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Cook said that a toss doesn’t guarantee a result but it was advantageous to bat first in the first two Tests. While India fought hard to play out a draw in the 1st test, Cook and Co were not good enough and lost the 2nd Test by 246 runs.

Cook also praised the Indian bowlers and said the current crop are quality bowlers in Indian pitches but are not superhuman by any stress of imagination.

“They bowled well. They are good bowlers in these conditions. In Rajkot, we got over 700 runs. Here we made them really hard in that last innings. They are good bowlers. They are not supermen by any stretch of imagination. They are a fine bowling attack but we showed in one game that we can score runs against them, with four players scoring hundreds. This game too, in the last innings, we made them work really hard for the wickets.

“It’s a disappointing loss but if we can get ahead of the game then we can put India under pressure. We just got to earn that right to do it. We are still very much in the series. A couple of good tosses will help that, there’s no doubt about that”.

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Speaking about England’s batting in the 2^nd essay, Cook said that they had planned to take the match as deep as possible but eventually fell short by a mammoth margin.

“We have set ourselves very clearly from the start of the innings, that we wanted to take it as deep as possible. We saw In one game, South Africa played 140-odd overs (Delhi, 2015). If we got to play 150-odd overs then we could have saved the game.

“Often in these circumstances, you just say ‘I’ll just play and see where we end up to. So we made a conscious effort to go that way. Everyone bought into it. It’s not some people’s natural way of playing. But you play your natural way and suddenly you are four down then lower-order starts digging in, then you think why didn’t we start that earlier. We made a very clear policy. Of course, when it does not work, you feel you could have been more positive, get the men around the bat out. You make a decision as a captain. Everyone bought into it. We came up a bit short”.

Cook was hopeful of a turnaround in the series much like their previous tour to India where they won the series after trailing 0-1.

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“What’s giving me belief in actually over 10 days of cricket is that we have competed very well in India, in their conditions. Yes, we have lost this game by a big margin. But the margin of runs is different. We could have played more aggressively and lost by 150 runs or so. But we went that way. It was a massive toss to lose but in certain periods of this game, we played some good cricket.

“If you took Virat Kohli’s runs out of the game — I know you can’t do that — but we have put their batters under a lot of pressure. Adil Rashid has been excellent in these two games, a real step up for him. Broady [Stuart Broad] bowled really well. Jimmy [James Anderson] is good on his comeback. So a lot of good things. We have got to put the whole game together to beat India. If we can get ahead of them in Mohali, then we can put pressure on them,” the optimistic England captain said.