The rescheduled fifth Test between India and England will get underway on Friday at Edgbaston, Birmingham. It would be interesting to see whether England go in with the same approach they had for the series against New Zealand, which saw them winning 3-0. Skipper Ben Stokes on Thursday indicated that his team would not change its approach and would look to do what they know.
“Well, we just beat the best team in the world 3-0, India are obviously a completely different opposition, different dynamic of a team but we are concentrating on ourselves, we understand what we do well but we have also taken into account who we are playing against. Just because the opposition changes does not mean we change,” Stokes said during a press conference.
“To be honest, I was not even watching cricket last summer, I did not watch most of it (India-England Tests last summer). But the thing with India is, the way Virat led India in Tests, was something to watch. So yeah, looking forward to the contest again,” he added.
When asked whether his side can play a more attacking brand of cricket than what was on offer against New Zealand, Stokes said: “If there’s a team that can, it’s us.”
Stokes also said that his side wants to reshape Test cricket and wants to ensure that the viewers come to watch them play.
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“We still obviously know that we need to win this game to draw the series. But you know as I said at the end of last week that, at the moment it is bigger than results, it is bigger than you know, what happens on the field, there is more to it. We obviously want to win every game we play but it is bigger than that,” said Stokes.
“I think what we managed to do over the last three weeks is just reshape Test cricket with the way we played. We want people to enjoy us watching play. I think people are enjoying watching us play because they do not know what they are going to get because they do not know how it is going to turn out but they know how we are going to play. I have sort of likened it to the ODI thing we started after 2015 World Cup, everybody wanted to watch us play,” he added.
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