Former England opening batsman Geoffrey Boycott has slammed Ben Stokes’s team for carrying on after India refused their offer for a draw on the final day of the fourth Test at Manchester.
“What goes around comes around. England were gobby enough when it suited them so you can’t blame India for wanting to stay on and allow two batsmen who had worked their socks off to reach their hundreds,” Boycott noted in his Telegraph column. “If you give it, like England do, then you have to be able to take it. I could hear them through the stump mics chipping away at India so why should they be nice to them and agree to go off when England have had enough?”
Boycott then said that if he were batting he too would have done what the Indians Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar did.
“These India players are tough cookies. They do not take a backward step. There is no way I would have let anyone drag me off on 89 after I had worked hard all day to save the game for my team.Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar deserved their hundreds. They left the ball well, played with the full face of the bat and defended their wickets at all costs. Well done,” Boycott wrote.
Not just Stokes who asked Jadeja ‘you want a hundred against Brook and Duckett?’, his other team-mates too had piled on. Harry Brook would sledge – “F*&#ing hell Washi, get on with it”. Pacer Jofra Archer too chipped in with: “If you wanted a hundred you should have batted like it earlier,” he would say. Opener Zak Crawley said: “If you shake our hands, it’s done.” And Ben Duckett couldn’t keep quiet. “How long do you need, an hour?”.
Boycott also made a point about mentioning the sledging that can occasionally turn sour as it has done in this series.
“I’m not sure what it is with modern players. You hear a lot of them mouthing off. It never really happened when I was playing. It will carry on at the Oval and India will go there thinking they got a win at Old Trafford.”
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The former opener noted how the fourth Test at Old Trafford exposed England’s bowling weakness.
“You learn more from failure than you do from success. And we failed to bowl India out. The draw highlighted the deficiencies in our bowling. If you think about it, when your best bowler in both innings is the England captain, who is a batsman-bowler, something is not right. It was a tremendous effort from Ben Stokes but apart from Jofra Archer at times, the rest were ineffective.”
Boycott wasn’t sure if Archer’s body is up for playing the final Test at The Oval in London.
“It was obvious in the second innings that he was puffing and blowing a bit. It is not surprising after four years out of Test cricket. You can have all the nets in the world but that is not like bowling 89 overs in two Tests. They want to think carefully about playing him at the Oval and remember why he got injured in New Zealand when Joe Root was captain. When you have a weapon like Jofra, you need to be cautious. Don’t expect too much too soon from him.”
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He praised Brydon Carse’s “big heart” but noted that he is a “bang-it-in-bowler who needs bounce”. And courtesy Bazball tactics, the pitches have all been devoid of bounce and much movement as it allows England’s batsmen to score quickly to facilitate their way of playing Test cricket.
“He [Carse] bowls an inconsistent length. If you look at Josh Hazlewood or Glenn McGrath, they pitch it up another couple of feet more. You want to get batsmen in two minds. Shall I go forward or stay back? That awkward in-between length.”
Similarly, Boycott believes that Chris Woakes is “not going to cut it at Test level when pitch is flat”. And Liam Dawson misses the x-factor. “ He was gentle and steady but there was no venom.”
He finally summed up the fourth Test thus: “The pitch was the winner at Old Trafford but it did set off some alarm bells about England’s bowling.”
