Veteran England batter Harry Brook praised fellow centurion Jamie Smith for a “phenomenal innings” at Edgbaston, where he smashed 184, surpassing Alec Stewart’s 173, setting a new record for an England wicket-keeper in Test cricket as well. When England lurched at 84 for 5, Brook and Smith steadied the ship, adding a stunning 303-run partnership for the sixth wicket in just two sessions. Brook himself scored a classy 158 as well.
“He tried to change the momentum back in our favour and it worked for a long period of time,” Brook said. “It was awesome. It was so good to watch from the other end. I felt like he could hit four or six every ball. I was just trying to get him on strike.”
However, the partnership finally broke just after India took the second new ball as well. The impressive Akash Deep hit with a sharp nip-backer that slipped past Harry Brook’s defences. Before his dismissal, he also had battled cramps in his right arm, needing physio treatment mid-innings as well.
“I was knackered,” Brook admitted. “It was [cramps in] my whole right side. I’d never had it before. It was probably the death of me at the end, but yeah, I was knackered. It probably didn’t help that we fielded for two days and then batted for nearly a full day… It wasn’t ideal.”
“I was definitely hungry to get a hundred today. I’d never been out in the 90s before, not even through school cricket,” Brook reflected. “It was disappointing, but I should have got a pair last week, so I can’t complain too much. I think everybody in the world knows that we’re going to try and chase whatever they set us. We’ve obviously got a big task at hand tomorrow morning and we’ll try and get a couple of wickets early on and try and put them under pressure.”
“Obviously, they are in front at the minute, but if we get a couple of early wickets in the morning, you never know how this game can go. As we’ve seen last week, we got 7 for 30 runs [7 for 41] and then 6 for 40 runs [6 for 31] at Headingley and then they’ve done the same to us today. Everything happened so quickly and you never know how the game can go,” Harry Brook concluded.
