Massive toss to lose, says Cook

We competed hard in foreign conditions: England captain

To say Alastair Cook was disappointed after England’s 246-run defeat in the second Test here would be an understatement. Not least for his own dismissal on the fourth day that turned out to be the last ball of the day.

“Thanks for reminding me,” said Cook when asked about him getting out after blocking for 221 minutes for his slowest half-century ever. “Hammer blow that. We fought so hard. I got only myself to blame.”

The England captain, however, sought to take positives from the first Test display and good work in patches in this match. “What's giving me belief in over 10 days of cricket is that we have competed very well in India in their conditions,” he pointed out when he was asked if they want to take heart from their series-winning efforts in the last two rubbers despite going down 0-1 in both series.

“Yes we have lost this game by a big margin. But the margin of runs is different. We could have played more aggressively and lost by 150 runs or so. But we went that way. It was a massive toss to lose but in certain periods of this game we played some good cricket. If you took Virat's runs out of the game -- I know you can't do that -- but we have put their batters under a lot of pressure. Adil Rashid has been excellent in these two games, a real step up for him. Broady (Stuart Broad) bowled really well. Jimmy (Anderson) is good on his comeback. So, a lot of good things. We have got to put the whole game together to beat India. If we can get ahead of them in Mohali, then we can put pressure on them,” he reasoned.

Talking about Indian bowlers (spinners), Cook said they were no supermen. “They bowled well. They are good bowlers in these conditions. In Rajkot we got over 700 runs. Here we made them work really hard in that last innings. They are good bowlers. They are not supermen by any stretch of imagination. They are a fine bowling attack but we showed in one game that we can score runs against them, with four players scoring hundreds. It's a disappointing loss but we are still very much in the series. A couple of good tosses will help that, there's no doubt about that.”