Vizag, India

England captain Ben Stokes admitted there was a belief in the dressing room about chasing 399 against India on day four of the second Test in Vizag. England lost the game by 106 runs despite valiant efforts from Crawley, Foakes and the lower order. Bumrah and Ashwin starred for India as the hosts made a successful comeback in this five-match series.

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"Coming into this last innings, we had full belief in ourselves that we could go and chase that down. The way in which we go about taking on challenges like that is what we're about, and the number of runs that we needed to get was just sort of another thing for us to try and try and chase down,” Stokes said at the post-match presentation.

Ruing the missed chance to go 2-0 up in this five-match series, Stokes said they backed themselves to trust the process and go for the win in the fourth innings. Stokes added with their newest style of attacking cricket, which the world now calls Bazball, they put India under pressure.

While Stokes backs England to approach remaining games in this series with the same fearless mindset, he congratulated India on being the better team on the day and winning when it mattered.

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"In moments like that, in games when you've got scoreboard pressure, a lot of runs to chase down, that's where your process and the way in which we know that we get the best out of ourselves as individuals, that really comes out. 

“And I thought the way in which we applied ourselves and really tried to put India's bowling attack under a lot of pressure was great. Unfortunately, we didn't end up on the right side of the result. Congrats to India, I thought they played a fantastic game and, again, another great game to be a part of,” Stokes added.

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‘We wanted to assert authority’

Entering India with the reputation of being one of the most aggressive sides in Test cricket, England had something at stake, and though they lost the game, they ensured of asserting the authority over India, telling them this is how they will play.

"The big thing for us was asserting our authority very early and letting the Indian bowling attack know that this is how we're going to go about the day, trying to not let them settle and make it as hard as we possibly could for them," Stokes told broadcaster TNT earlier. 

"I know we've got to give credit to [India captain] Rohit [Sharma], the way in which he led, and credit to the bowlers that every time that we would drag the momentum back towards us and sort of felt like we were getting on top of them, they were able to produce something to take the wicket and put us back."

"But, I'm real pleased with the way in which that we found ourselves in a pressure situation. Chasing runs down in India is never easy, but we were actually able to go out there and stick to everything that we speak about,” the England captain added.