Cook: We weren’t good enough

Skipper Alastair Cook has conceded that England’s batting let them down in their loss against India in the third Test in Mohali.

England won the toss and elected to bat on a decent wicket but could only post a total of 283 all out as the top order failed yet again.

Jos Buttler was brought in for the out-of-sorts Ben Duckett with Moeen Ali moving up to fourth in the order but it would not remedy their batting woes.

Cook said after the loss: “You need a big score on a wicket like that and we weren’t good enough to make one.

“Jonny Bairstow made a good 80, but we need hundreds. The pitch wasn’t too different to Rajkot, maybe slightly harder to score on, but it was 400 par and we were below it. We just weren’t good enough.”

The skipper felt England played a big role in their own demise, throwing their wickets away to balls that weren’t that special.

He added: “There were not magic balls.

“Maybe Jonny Bairstow was the only one that was a good piece of bowling, but apart from that there wasn’t a huge amount misbehaving from the pitch. It was good accurate bowling, as you expect from India in these conditions, but not unplayable. You can talk all you want but the top order have to go and deliver.”

England will have a few more days off than normal before the fourth Test with some of the squad set to travel to Dubai with no scheduled training.

Cook went on to say: “It will mentally give us a break from cricket.

“We can come back more refreshed.”

The skipper admitted they misread the pitch which turned out to not be the dry turner that was expected and as such the balance of the team was skewed.

He said: “All of us probably misread the pitch.

“We thought it was dry and would spin more. If we had known what we do now, we would have gone four seamers two spinners. The seamers were always in the game with reverse and the way we bash length, we can control the scoring rate very well.”

 

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