Dharamsala Test: Series defeat to India cannot suppress Bazball, says England skipper Ben Stokes

England captain Ben Stokes admits to accepting the embarrassing defeat at the hands of India in the recently concluded Test series but claims that it cannot dent the brand of cricket (the world now calls Bazball) that led to his side’s revival in Test cricket. Stokes said while England had their moments in each of the last four Tests that they lost, they failed to turn it around for the better, thus going down 1-4 in this five-match series.

Stokes admitted his team was outplayed by a better side in away conditions instead of looking into excuses that led to this scoreline. He added that they look forward to what awaits them later this year, with Test series against Pakistan and New Zealand scheduled.

ALSO READ:BCCI secretary Jay Shah introduces ‘incentive scheme’ to protect and promote Test cricket in India

Add WION as a Preferred Source

"Now that the series has come to an end - I don't give too much away, obviously, whilst the series is going on - but since the first Test match of the series, we're man enough, and we're big enough to say that we've been outplayed by the better team in the series," Stokes said.

"But we've got so much cricket coming up in our summer, and then Pakistan and New Zealand. Taking the positives that we've got from the series is something that I'm really looking forward to. I'm excited to be a part of driving this team even further forward,” Stokes added.

In the lead-up to this series, the English media hyped the Bazball style of play, pushing for them to break the ice of beating India in India. That, however, didn’t happen. Although England won the first Test in Hyderabad, they lost the next four matches to suffer a series defeat.

"…we ain't gonna let the last two years go to waste over this series in isolation," Stokes said.

"When you look at the game as a whole, and the series as a whole, there's been really small moments throughout every Test match where we wrestled a bit of momentum back towards us, but we've not just been able to maintain and keep that going," Stokes added.

Milestones for England

While Jonny Bairstow played his 100th Test (in Dharamsala) alongside Ravi Ashwin, England seamer James Anderson created history by becoming the first pacer and the third bowler, after Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne,to complete 700 Test wickets.

"I've been lucky enough to be on the field with some of the lads there, the milestones that Jimmy's got to, but being there for 700 wickets as a seamer, it is quite phenomenal," Stokes said.