England batter Harry Brook has said the edge that marked the Lord’s Test defeat of India was ‘fun’ adding England ‘don’t always have to be nice guys’<\/p>\n
Harry Brook has insisted England “don’t always have to be nice” as they prepare to resume hostilities against India after tensions threatened to boil over last time out at Lord’s.<\/p>\n
After exchanging good-natured wins at Headingley and Edgbaston, the Test series grew spicy as India’s fielders clashed with Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett in a time-wasting row.<\/p>\n
That lit a fire under England when it was their turn to field, with Jofra Archer giving a pumped-up send-off to Rishabh Pant while Brydon Carse and Ravindra Jadeja were involved in a mid-pitch collision.<\/p>\n
India crumbled to 170 all out in pursuit of 193 to fall 2-1 down ahead of this week’s penultimate Test at Old Trafford, but Brook did not think England crossed any line in their pursuit of victory.<\/p>\n
Brook said: “I’ve had a lot of compliments. Everybody said it was awesome to watch. It was good fun, I have to admit, it was tiring but it made fielding a lot more enjoyable.<\/p>\n
Mohammed Siraj was fined for his send off of Ben Duckett \/\/ Getty<\/p>\n
“I think it put them under a little bit more pressure. The opportunity that arose for us to not be the nice guys was because of what they did.<\/p>\n
“We just thought ‘we’re not standing for that’.<\/p>\n
“We had a conversation and said ‘it’s time to not be those nice guys that we have been before’. You don’t always have to be nice. Who knows, that might have played into our favour. It was good fun.<\/p>\n
“We were doing it within the spirit of the game. We weren’t going out there effing and jeffing at them and being nasty people. We were just going about it in the right manner.”<\/p>\n
England have been accused of being too carefree and Brook revealed it was at his urging after some choice words from head coach Brendon “Baz” McCullum that they should shed that approach.<\/p>\n
“We were just putting them under more pressure. Baz actually said a few days before that we are too nice sometimes, and I brought it up the night before the last day: ‘Baz said the other day we’re too nice, I think tomorrow is a perfect opportunity to really get stuck into them’.”<\/p>\n
Mohammed Siraj was fined 15 per cent of his match fee and given one demerit point for his angry send-off of Duckett during England’s second innings, which ended with the pair brushing shoulders.<\/p>\n
But after Siraj became the last batter out a series of England players, including Brook, went over to offer commiserations to him.<\/p>\n
Dawson set for Test return<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Liam Dawson has been named in England’s XI for Old Trafford, marking the spinner’s first Test appearance in eight years.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old Hampshire left-armer replaces Shoaib Bashir, who suffered a fracture to his finger at Lord’s, though he did take the final wicket.<\/p>\n
Dawson, who played for Melbourne Stars in the 2023-24 BBL and enjoyed a white-ball international recall earlier this year, won the last of his three Test caps in July 2017.<\/p>\n
He is the only change for England, meaning Jofra Archer is set to play back-to-back Tests having not played a Test in the previous four years and only one red-ball match since the summer of 2021.<\/p>\n
After a week off England have no concerns about his readiness to go again on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
India will retain their own pace ace, Jasprit Bumrah, according to fellow quick Siraj.<\/p>\n
The world’s top-ranked bowler had been earmarked for three Tests to manage his workload and he has already featured in India’s defeats at Headingley and at Lord’s last week.<\/p>\n
But, with doubts over the availability of another seamer in Akash Deep owing to a groin injury, India are going all in on Bumrah now rather than hold him back for next week’s final Test.<\/p>\n
“So far, we only know that Jassi (Bumrah) will play,” said Siraj.<\/p>\n
The tourists must make at least one change as Nitish Kumar Reddy will miss the last two Tests because of a knee injury, with the allrounder set to return home to start his rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
India are also sweating on the fitness of wicketkeeper-batter Rishabh Pant, who suffered a finger injury at Lord’s, although he could feature as a specialist batter.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it is understood Mark Wood’s hopes of being available for the fifth Test have been dashed.<\/p>\n
Initially ruled out for four months following knee surgery in March, Wood rated himself as “50\/50” for a potential decider at the Oval, but he will now target the later white-ball matches against South Africa for his England return.<\/p>\n
England’s fourth Test XI: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Liam Dawson, Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England batter Harry Brook has said the edge that marked the Lord’s Test defeat of India was ‘fun’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-12104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}