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Ben Duckett in action for England during the second innings of first Anderson-Tendulkar Test. (AP)
A few days before England’s first Test against India, their captain Ben Stokes had spoken about a slight tweak in the Bazball approach – not just entertain, but win more. “It’s about adapting better when we’re up against the wall,’ he said. ‘When those moments come in the series, and they no doubt will, it’s about identifying them a lot quicker, gritting our teeth and asking ourselves what is it we need to do to wrestle the momentum back. When we are on top of teams, we are very good, but where we may have let ourselves down over the last three years is when we have been behind the game.”
On the final day of the Test, Ben Duckett, who starred with a smashing 149 to lead England to a famous win, spoke about how he and his team adapted to the new approach of being calm and not being too reckless.
“We didn’t talk about it today (morning) but it was clear that we wanted to win the Test matches now. To win this and start a massive series 1-up is great,” Ben Duckett told BBC.
He admitted there were a couple of moments when he thought about shifting into next gear and attacking more, but that he restrained himself.
“There were moments in my head, thinking about stepping into the next gear, but … the rain breaks also kind of helped me today (in dealing with that). Bowlers also had to stop-start, find their rhythm.”
He was asked whether there was a conscious decision from England to take out the franticness from their usual Bazball way, go about it a touch more calmly, and he agreed that it was.
“Yes, definitely (to be calm). When you looked at the scoreboard, we knew if we batted today fully we would win the game. It’s a fast-scoring ground and we can score quick enough to take the weather out of the equation. It felt very calm in the dressing room.
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“A situation like that, five down, you take two wickets and the game is completely different. For Jamie (Smith) to soak up the pressure like he did, and to know when to switch it on, like he did in the end. And it’s easy to be calm when Joe Root is out there in the middle,” Duckett said.
Moments before Duckett spoke, former England captain Alastair Cook was on air doing commentary on BBC, and he spoke about the calmness and control that England showed without going overboard in the chase.
“The word I would use is control of what we just saw today,” Cook said. “It was a run chase of 371 in not a minefield but it was a fifth-day wicket, the ball was doing something, spinning out of rough, it was overcast, but not once did I today -after watching duckett, Crawley bat for 20 minutes, did I think they are not going to do that. After 20 minutes, I looked up and thought they were going to cruise this.
To have that ability and quality of batsmanship was great,” Cook said.
English (US) ·