Talking about their disappointed grand batting collapse on the second day of the ongoing third Test at Trent Bridge (Nottingham), English cricketer Jos Buttler said that “We let that slip”.
After bundling out the visitors India on 329 runs, English openers Alastair Cook and Keaton Jennings provided a good start with a half-century partnership on Sunday. At lunch, England was on 46/0. But in the second session of the day, England lost their all wickets in quick successions.
From 54/0, England team was bundled out for just 161 runs, thanks to Hardik Pandya’s (5/28) maiden five-wicket haul in the international career. Buttler was the highest runs scorer in that innings with counter-attacking 39 runs off 32 balls while Cook (29) and Jennings (20) are the only other English batsmen in that innings to reach the 20-run mark.
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Talking about their disappointed batting performances, Buttler stated at the end of the day, “It’s very disappointing after a really good start to the day as well, picking up those early wickets and being 50 for none. We let that slip. It’s important we can recognise why it’s happened, and improve.”
“It’s been tough for the batsmen (at times) throughout this series. When we’ve got that momentum, when we’ve been bowling, it felt like we were going to take a wicket every ball.
“It comes down to how can you wrestle back the initiative maybe with a counter-attacking style or someone trying to sit in and be a bit of a limpet for an hour and ride that session out. But obviously, we weren’t good enough to do that today.”
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While Buttler has credited the Indian bowlers to utilise well the favourable bowling condition, he also added that they can’t make the same mistake in the second innings.
Buttler added, “It comes down to the guys working hard, being disciplined, practice, all of the above. It’s hard, it’s not easy it’s not meant to be easy. Test cricket tests for individuals and teams in tough ways. It takes a lot of character for us to come back from tough situations like this.
“Guys have got to improve. We know that as a side – to get to where we want to go, we need to eradicate these collapses. The key is trying not to make the same mistakes. You can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again, whether that’s as an individual or as a team.
“We know in England conditions can be tough favourable for swing bowling. Credit to India, I thought they bowled really well and got the ball moving around, and we weren’t good enough to deal with that today.”
India started the game by trailing the series in the 2-0 margin but Buttler believes the series is still alive as the top-ranked Test team would be desperate to make a comeback strongly.
Buttler said, “India were ever going to go anywhere. They’re the number one ranked side in the world and they’re there for a reason. It was always going to be a competitive series. Just because they were 2-0 down I don’t think we could have taken anything lightly. We probably didn’t quite hit our straps as well as we would have liked the first morning with the ball as well.
“Winning the toss brings pressure to take wickets and we didn’t quite execute as well as we would have liked. I think it’s always going to be a competitive series against the number one team in the world so they were always going to come back strongly.”
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After trailing down by 168 runs at the end of the first innings fights, England was 292 runs behind at the end of the day two as India was batting on 124/2 in their second innings. However, Buttler still believes that they can turn the game on Monday, the day three of the Test match.
Buttler said on this, “It looks like, when one side has that momentum, it seems hard to wrestle back. It’s hard for sides to get back into games. Yes, of course otherwise there’s no point turning up. I think any professional sportsman takes pride in playing for their country and we’ll turn up tomorrow and we’ll be fighting hard.”
