England skipper Ben Stokes was all praise for India's pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah ahead of third Test in Rajkot, which is slated to start from February 14, Thursday. Despite pre-series talk of spinners ruling the roost, fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah has stolen the show, becoming the top wicket-taker and bamboozling even England's best, like captain Ben Stokes, in the first two Tests. Though Bumrah skipped India's practice sessions before the third Test, a worried Stokes can only hope his batsmen finally crack the ‘Bumrah code’ to counter this pace magician.
Bumrah is an unbelievable bowler: Stokes
“Bumrah is an unbelievable bowler. He has proven that for a very long time and has performed really well in the two games. I think everyone has got their own way of not trying to deal with Bumrah but we do have to score runs off him as well and that’s what we will try to do,” Stokes said in the pre-match press conference on February 14, Wednesday.
“But when that doesn’t work you just have to give credit to the bowler and Jasprit has been outstanding the first two games. We have all got our own processes against every single bowler and there is no team way of playing anyone. But as we always try to do, we will be trying to keep the focus around us,” he added.
While celebrating his own 100th Test milestone, Stokes channeled Broad's 2016 Rajkot match to justify dropping spinner Shoaib Bashir for pacer Mark Wood, suggesting the pitch might favor pace this time too.
“Taking a bit of knowledge from the last Test match we played here, albeit a long time ago, it was a pretty true, flat wicket. Looking at it today, it looks a bit platey but I think it’s a good wicket. Bringing in an extra seamer this week is the option we’ve gone with because we think it’s going to give us the best chance of winning this week,” Stokes further said.
England captain also talked about Virat Kohli's absence and said that it offers an excellent opportunity for them to win the third Test. Nonetheless, he emphasised that Kohli's absence should not be seen strictly in terms of advantage or disadvantage.
“I don’t mean to say anything disrespectful to the question. I think when it’s situations like these, when someone is missing a big series and a lot of cricket due to personal reasons, which we are not sure of, we shouldn’t label that as positive or negative to our team,” Stokes said in the video posted by the ECB.
“We should just let it be. It’s a broader loss for cricket. I wish Virat whatever he is going through all the best, I wish he comes through it. Virat Kohli, on a cricket field, is something that everybody wants to see,” Stokes concluded.
India’s updated squad for the third Test: Rohit Sharma (c), Jasprit Bumrah (vc), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, Rajat Patidar, Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (wk), KS Bharat (wk), R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja*, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Akash Deep, Devdutt Padikkal.
England's Playing XI for 3rd Test: Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes (C), Ben Foakes, Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, Mark Wood, James Anderson.
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