Pace spearhead James Anderson said that England’s recent success with their aggressive playing style had affected India’s third innings despite the commanding position they had for much of the ongoing Test. Team India led by 171 going into the third day’s play but were unable to do well as England bowled them for 255 runs as well. And, the veteran has said that England would have tried to chase even if India had gone ahead by 600 runs as well.
“I think the nerves were there to see today, the way they batted, I think they didn’t know how many was enough,” James Anderson said after Stumps on Day 3. “They were quite cautious, even when they had a big lead. The chat last night from the coach was that if they get 600, we were going to go for it.”
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He added, “It makes it very clear to everyone that we will try to do it tomorrow. I know there are 180 overs left in the game, but we will try to do it in 60 or 70. That’s the way we play, and we saw that tonight with Rehan [Ahmed] going out and playing his shots. He wanted to get out there and chase those runs down, even tonight. We have set our stall out, tomorrow will be no different, we will play the same way we have the last two years. Whether we win or lose, it’s not irrelevant because we are extremely competitive and want to win every game we play, but we want to play in a certain way. I think we will be doing that tomorrow.”
However, Team India’s second innings was similar to their first and revolved around one big innings from Gill while the rest of the batting failed to do well. Shubman Gill scored 104 before getting dismissed.
“Yeah definitely. There’s been moments throughout the last 2 years, particularly in the last 12 months, that makes us think we’re doing something well because the way teams have reacted,” he said. “Going back to the Ashes, first ball of the Ashes having point on the boundary sends a message to us we’re doing something right.”
“I don’t know if intimidating is the right word, but it’s putting different thoughts in opposition’s minds and captain’s minds. It definitely felt like that today – it felt like they were unsure what a good score would be against us. The wicket is still pretty good, the odd one’s keeping low, but you expect that. Also what we’ve seen today is Shubman played brilliantly – it does show there’s still scores to be made out there. We’ve got so much quality in our dressing room, there are guys in there who can maybe get 150 for us tomorrow and win us the game. We’re really happy,” James Anderson concluded.
