England captain Ben Stokes lost his first Test series as captain on Monday (February 26) as England couldn't defend the target of 192 runs on the fourth day of the fourth Test in Ranchi. Dhruv Jurel was the star of the Test winning the player of the match award in his debut series itself. Not only for India but the youngsters have stepped up for England as well with Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir picking wickets.
For the same reason, Stokes is happy and proud that his side put up a fight against India in their own den pushing the home team to the corner multiple times. "I think it was a great Test match. If you see the scoreboard, it'll say India won by 5 wickets, but it doesn't give credit to the way things unfolded, the ebbs and flows on every single day it happened. I can only be proud of my team, we 've had some inexperienced spinners (Bashir and Hartley), but I'm proud of their efforts, they came here without a lot of exposure and the way they kept bowling.
"I can't ask for anything more. Part of my captaincy is allowing the young guys to revel and the freedom to play in some difficult and intimidating conditions in India," he said after the match. He also opened up on Joe Root's criticism after the third Test for his poor form and felt that all the chatter outside was unfair as the champion cricketer responded with a proper Test century in the first innings in Ranchi. Stokes also admitted that it was very tough for the batters to face the likes of Ravi Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav in the second innings.
"I am a massive Test cricket fan, the numbers of youngsters coming along in both teams sets things up nicely for the future of Test cricket. If you look yesterday, anything was possible, it was incredibly difficult batting against the spinners (Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep), scoring became difficult and so was rotating the strike. We knew the pitch wouldn't get any better, as we saw today. I don't think the criticism of Joe Root has been fair, the sheer amount of cricket he's played, got 12,000 Test runs. He's incredible.
"So is Bashir, what a story, what a journey, taking 8 wickets including a 5-fer against India after having hardly played a lot of cricket is superb. You want to win series, you want to play and win cricket matches. I've been here for a couple of years (as captain) and my message is simple. The only thing I can say is we left nothing on the field, we've fought hard and I'm happy with that," Stokes added.
