England captain Ben Stokes said at the post-match conference on Sunday that India prevailed over his team in every department of the game with pacer Akash Deep's incredible performance making the decisive difference in the second Test match.
Playing his first game of the series, Akash Deep picked up 10 wickets in the match to enable India to register a 336-run win, its first one at Edgbaston. The five-match series is now even 1-1 with the third Test to be played at Lord's from July 10.
“I thought Akash exposed that crack last night and this morning. His ability is to use and change his angles consistently and still be so accurate. He was zoning in on that crack. That one Harry Brook got this morning you can't do anything about that,” said Stokes in the post-match press conference.
He said Akash was relentlessly attacking the stumps from a good length and using the angles effectively. He was able to generate the most amount of seam movement in the match. He got one length ball to hit the crack and nip back sharply to thud into Harry Brooks' pads. Broooks could not do anything about that stunning delivery.
“Standing at the other end when Jamie Smith got a couple of those early on. It was seaming a foot off it. Incredible skilful to hone in on that zone while still changing his angles on the crease. I thought it was good,” said Stokes.
‘Task was batting out 80 overs’
Resuming the day at 72 for three, England could only bat 52.1 overs on Day 5 in the improbable chase of 608. The Stokes led side doesn’t believe in draws, but the captain had specified that the target was out of reach.
“...300 and something is obviously a big margin (for the defeat). We knew what task we had ahead of us going into when we first went out to bat. That changed when you lose three wickets last night and lose two early wickets,” he said.
“The task today was batting out the 80 overs. The result we always try to push towards, and look for, was beyond...for us as a batting unit, to go out and bat the 80 overs was to go and play the way we play and focus on the fact that we knew we had to bat 80 overs.” India pushed to get 600 for some obvious reasons," said Stokes, referring to India’s delayed declaration.
Asked to pick two important moments of the game, Stokes said, "There were two moments in the game. Having them 200 for five and then not quite being able to blast them open, like we know that we can. They ended up getting a big first innings total, obviously after us having a good start, having them five down for not too many on the board. Then obviously being 80 for five in reply to the first innings, it's obviously going to be tough to get back into a position where you look to push on and be on the winning side at the end of the game.”
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