England national cricket team’s top batsman Alastair Cook has issued a warning to the Rohit Sharma-led team. Indian National Cricket Team after the second Test match of the five-match series at the Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, Visakhapatnam.
India managed to register a 106-run win in the second Test match to level the series at 1-1. England had surprised India in the first Test by winning from a difficult position and would look to bounce back after facing a defeat in the second Test. The third Test is scheduled to be played from February 15 at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Rajkot.
Jasprit Bumrah was the main architect behind the Indian team’s victory in the second Test as he bagged 9 wickets in the Vizag Test to deceive the English batting unit. Despite getting no help from the surface, Bumrah showed absolute dominance and did not let the batsmen settle down. He also won the Man of the Match award for his impressive performance.
Apart from Bumrah, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill also played a key role in the team’s victory. Jaiswal scored a magnificent double century in the first innings, while Shubman Gill made a brilliant ton under pressure in the second innings.
Despite India’s brilliant performance in the second Test, Alastair Cook stated that the Indian team can be defeated again. He said the reason behind England’s defeat was the failure of batting and he backed them to learn from the defeat.
“India will be more relieved than anything. They were under attack after the first test,” Cook said on TNT Sports.
“England lost the game because none of their batsmen had a winning innings. That’s what they’ll look back on. Scores of 30-70 don’t win Test matches… England have come close here without hundreds. They will be disappointed. However, there will definitely be things that England will take away from this match. This Indian team can definitely be defeated again,” he added.
Alastair Cook on Joe Root’s struggles in Test series against Indian national cricket team
Alastair Cook also spoke about England batsman great Joe Root’s poor run of form in the ongoing Test series against India.
Alastair Cook said that Joe Root is trying to adapt to England’s Bazball style and trying to play attacking cricket which is the reason for his failure.
“You see all these other people taking these aggressive shots, which suit their style. Rooty has 11,500 tests, he is brilliant, but he is so desperate to fit into what Ben [Stokes] and brendon [McCullum] When we do it, sometimes I don’t think I get the right balance between offense and defense,” Cook said.
“He is the best batsman England has ever seen in all formats but sometimes he struggles with the pace of this era of Bazball,” he added.
In the second Test against India, Joe Root recorded scores of 5 and 16 and got out while trying to hit a boundary off Ravichand.ran Ashwin.