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England have blown a 1-0 lead in their ongoing five-match Test series in India after losing the second and third Tests. While the second Test in Visakhapatnam was a thriller and England were praised for the way they fought, the visitors received a lot of criticism for the way they capitulated in the third. England lost the match in Rajkot by 434 runs, the highest margin of victory by runs for India in their Test history.
A loss in the fourth Test in Ranchi would confirm a series win for India and it looks like England captain Ben Stokes is ready to do everything he can to ensure his team stays in the series, even if it means getting ahead of what was planned. go back to bowling.
“I’m not saying yes, I’m not saying no. Being me, I’m always very optimistic about most things. That will be a more detailed chat with the medical team about the workload I’ve done to get through.” like not being a huge risk,” Stokes said of bowling in the fourth Test. The 32-year-old is recovering from knee surgery and had previously said he had made a “pinky promise” to his physiotherapist. that he would not bowl in this series. However, Stokes said progress on his return to bowling full-time in Test matches has been “a lot quicker than I thought”.
During the Rajkot test, Stokes even trained at 100 per cent intensity and admitted that he felt pretty good. “I managed to play at 100 per cent on 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.”
Stokes being able to bowl will be a huge positive for England’s balance in their bowling line-up. The visitors arrived with a spinning attack woefully inexperienced. While Tom Hartley, Rehan Ahmed and Shoaib Bashir ended up matching the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja almost toe-to-toe, even surpassing them, in the first two Tests, they were taken to the cleaners in the third. Furthermore, England also had to release one of their spinners when they needed to bring in a second pacer, leaving out Bashir to play against Mark Wood and James Anderson in Rajkot.
Head coach Brendon McCullum said he’s confident Stokes won’t do it unless he truly believes he’s ready. However, the former New Zealand captain said Stokes even talking about returning to bowling is good news. “Well, it’s good that he’s getting to a state where he thinks he could bowl,” McCullum said. “But Ben is smart; he’s also very smart. He won’t bowl unless he thinks he’s legitimately capable of it. The problem would be if he starts to fall into a spell and then can’t get out of the spell. So “We’ll see what happens.” happens. If he gets that piece between his teeth, then we’ll see where the danger is and try to get him away from it. But it’s a good sign,” McCullum said.