Former England captain Nasser Hussain has stated that Ben Stokes’ approach was wrong during the match against India on Sunday in Lucknow as he waited for things to ease down in the middle but the plan backfired. Stokes, who came in to bat at No.4 registered a 10-ball duck. He sat back in the crease and tried to blast the ball away with a big shot, but the ball hit the stumps and England reduced from 30-0 to 33-3 while chasing 230.
In his column for The Daily Mail, Hussain wrote, “I was on commentary at that time with Eoin Morgan, when Ben Stokes was batting, and that is when we disagreed. Eoin would have tried to hit the ball into the outfield to try to make it wet and harder to bowl with, and that’s exactly what Stokes tried to do. It is very rare Ben gets it wrong, and he has been the key man in so many difficult situations in different forms of cricket over the years. But I’m not sure he got it right this time and contributed to England again losing wickets in the powerplay.”
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However, Nasser Hussain also stated that the first 10 overs of the innings were important as well. However, The defending champions England couldn’t stop the wickets from falling once it started as India won by a massive 100 runs eventually.
The Ben stokes moment 🔥. The crowdcheering for every ball as if there was wicket ❤️#CricketTwitter #INDvsENG pic.twitter.com/Z2qb7Dl8kN
— Mritunjay Dubey (@mddubey409) October 29, 2023
“What England had to do was come through that tricky five to 10 over period at the start of their innings when the new ball was going to nip around, and then, things would have become easier for them. So, for me, old-fashioned as I am, that was the time when they needed to grind it out and survive that difficult spell you get in any form of the game,” Nasser Hussain concluded. “There may be a remote mathematical chance of England still getting to the last four but it’s not going to happen. They are out of this tournament and all they can do now is try to pull this around, beat Australia on Saturday and regain as much pride as possible.”
