Ben Stokes<\/a> offered to shake hands with 15 overs remaining on day five. But with both batters approaching three figures \u2013 Sundar on 80, Jadeja on 89 \u2013 India continued to bat.<\/p>\nStokes, wishing to rest his frontline bowlers, brought on Harry Brook, who dished up some helpful offerings to the pair of southpaws. He conceded 24 off three overs, the contest concluding with Sundar reaching his maiden Test century.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hold your hands up, they played incredibly well,\u201d Stokes said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think there would have been too much more satisfaction from walking off 100 not out, getting your team out of a tricky situation, than walking off at 80, 90 not out. That\u2019s what you\u2019ve done for your team.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen more runs or whatever it was ain\u2019t going to change the fact that you\u2019ve managed to get your team out of a very tricky situation and almost saved your team from a series defeat before the last game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took the game as far as we could with our frontline bowlers. As soon as it got to that point where the draw was inevitable, I was never going to risk my frontline bowlers with the short turnaround that we have and the workload that we\u2019ve got through this week and throughout this series as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did have to tell [Brook]: \u2018Don\u2019t do anything stupid.\u2019 We\u2019ve spent a lot of time out in the field, can\u2019t have you pulling a side or doing anything different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja on their way to centuries at Old Trafford. Photograph: Barry Mitchell\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Gambhir thought differently of the situation. \u201cIf someone is batting on 90 and the other one is batting on 85, don\u2019t they deserve a hundred? Would they have walked off? If someone from the England side would have been batting on 90 or 85, if someone had the opportunity to get his first Test hundred, wouldn\u2019t you allow him to do it, if they weathered the storm? It\u2019s up to them. If they want to play that way, that\u2019s up to them. I\u2019ve got nothing more to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stokes endured a significant workload during the Test. While he celebrated hitting a century and taking a five-wicket haul, the all-rounder grimaced through his spell on the fifth morning. Asked how he was feeling, he replied: \u201cMentally, decent. Physically, been better.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a pretty big workload so far in the series. Another big last week at Lord\u2019s, the time I spent out in the middle with bat in hand and overs bowled. And then same again this week. I said a few times to the guys out there: \u2018Pain is just an emotion.\u2019 It\u2019s just one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stokes did not offer complete certainty over whether he will play the final Test at the Oval, which begins on Thursday, although \u2013 through a confusing use of words \u2013 suggested he will be present as England aim to secure a series victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look at how long we\u2019ve been out in the field and the overs that we bowled as a bowling unit, everyone\u2019s going to be pretty sore and pretty tired going into the last game of the series,\u201d Stokes said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there will be an assessment of everyone and hopefully we can use these next two to three days\u2019 rest wisely and then have to make a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese recovery days are going to be pretty important and we might have to make a few decisions to get some fresh legs in. But that won\u2019t be decided until we get closer to the last game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to eat my words, but the likelihood that I won\u2019t play is very unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gautam Gambhir, India\u2019s head coach, offered a strident defence of his side as Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-28380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}