England head coach Chris Silverwood asserted that they expected the Ahmedabad pitch to last longer in the third Test at the Narendra Modi Stadium. India registered a 10-wicket win over England within two days in the pink-ball Test to take an unassailable 2-1 lead in the four-match series. The match saw poor batsmen from both sides fail miserably on a spinning track, with the majority of them getting out to deliveries that didn’t turn and skidded through from the spinners.
Describing the same during a virtual press conference, Chris Silverwood said, “First and foremost, it’s just a follow-up from what Joe Root said yesterday, he got 5/8 yesterday but at the same time, whatever the pitch did or it didn’t do, India ultimately played better than us on that surface, probably they pushed us to the extremes which our players haven’t experienced before.”
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When asked about whether England would be making an official complaint to the ICC about the pitch used in the third Test, Silverwood replied: “Listen, we will be talking about certain things behind the scenes. But at the same time, we were really disappointed that we lost with three days of cricket left. We have spoken to Javagal (match referee), but it was not about the pitch. We have to accept that we need to get better on these pitches.”
England had opted to go in with just one spinner — Jack Leach — in the third Test. Root, who is normally a part-timer, managed to scalp his maiden five-wicket haul and Silverwood cited this performance to say that the visitors did not make a mistake in team selection.
Elaborating the same, Silverwood said, “Joe Root got 5/8 so the second spinner did fine for us. We did expect the wicket to hold up a little longer than it did. It’s not that we did not think about it, there was logic, we had a look at the stats and how we can use pink ball the best. Root works very hard on his bowling, I am always saying to him that he always under bowls himself. But Joe being Joe, he had to do it this time and he got 5/8.”
After both teams failed to bat well in their first innings, England was eventually got bundled out for 81 in the second innings, setting India a target of just 49 runs. The hosts chased down the total without losing any wicket to go 2-1 up in the series.
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With the match getting over well inside two days, there was a lot of discussion regarding the quality of the pitch, but India opener Rohit Sharma clarified that he did not think the pitch had any demons in it.
