Nagpur another challenge: Cook

We performed close to potential

England skipper Alastair Cook had every right to spot a wide grin after leading his side to a 2-1 lead in the four-match series, after completing the formalities on Sunday for a seven-wicket win over India at the Eden Gardens.

The Essex man attributed England’s dominant position in the series to the willingness to accept their shortcomings and work on it.

Excerpts from his media conference:

On England’s turnaround in the series after losing the first Test: The first thing was the realisation of our problem, about playing spin. Probably, it was not as big as it was made out, but all of us as a batting unit had to take a look at our technique. And work out a method that suits each individual. What we have done is to take what we did in the nets out in the middle, and started to perform close to our potential. That’s what’s really happened in this game.

On England’s approach in the final Test at Nagpur:  You can’t go into that game with that (draw) mentality. We have to do same as we have done in these last two games. And again, produce the goods. We know we can do something special, but it will need a lot of hard work to do that. We can’t keep patting ourselves in the back now. It’s not the time. We got another challenge around the corner. We have to recover well and go into that Test match believing we can win.

On whether doubts about their skill crawled into England batsmen’s mind after losing the first Test: Not at all. I firmly believed that we were doing the right things, especially in the three weeks before the first Test.  These results are proving it. Of course, it doesn’t stop now, and we got to keep doing these things for the next few days.

On his bizarre run out: There will be a video somewhere for the rest of my life. I just had a brain failure. I was walking back and saw this ball coming back. My first reaction was to flinch when most people will have put the bat in…realisation that I had done it was more embarrassing.