Ben Stokes paid tribute to the bravery of Chris Woakes as a series during which players battled at various stages through broken feet and shattered fingers ended with a one-armed man at the crease, his other arm in a sling, enduring obvious agony as England fell just seven runs short of victory.
“That never-say-die, never-back-down attitude we’ve installed in the group nearly paid off,” Stokes said. “It was never going to be a question for him to go out there. Obviously he was in a lot of discomfort even running between the wickets.
“But we’ve had Rishabh Pant go out to bat with a broken foot, we’ve had Shoaib Bashir bowling, batting and fielding with a broken finger, and then we had Chris go out there and try and get his team over the line with a quite recently dislocated shoulder.
“Before he went out I didn’t get a chance to give him a tap on the back and say: ‘Go well.’ Coming off it’s obvious what would have been said, just: ‘Great effort, unbelievable.’ He just shrugged his shoulder and said: ‘I wouldn’t do anything else.’”
Stokes, who was ruled out of the game with a shoulder injury of his own, pinpointed the moment Woakes went down on the opening day as the moment that decided the match – “It took, I don’t know, half a second for a shoulder to pop out, and everything just completely changed for us there” – but the captain admitted that the six catches England dropped during India’s second innings had contributed.
“You could say those chances that we put down did cost us, but back to Headingley where we chased down those runs, India dropped quite a few chances and that probably did contribute to us winning. Maybe if we did hold on to those chances, things could have been a little bit different.”
Though the game ended in defeat in the adversity of playing the majority of it a man down, Stokes felt certain that players demonstrated previously unknown courage. “Some guys will leave this series having found out a lot more about themselves,” Stokes said.
“In particular this game, with Woakesy going down early on, the responsibility that fell on Gus Atkinson, Josh Tongue and Jamie Overton’s shoulders – their roles completely changed from why they were selected, the impact we thought they would have on the game. They had to dig deep. I think a couple of guys have found out more about themselves in a very, very positive way.
“They took that responsibility on without adding pressure to themselves. They did that in a way of pride – one of the boys has gone down and we’re going to have to take on that workload. I think some people would shy away from that and be worried about what it means for them. They showed a lot of courage, a lot of heart. They can be very proud of the way they threw themselves into that.”
After an appropriately, brutally tense conclusion on its 25th day the series will be remembered as a classic, with Stokes admitting that the final scoreline of 2-2 was “probably fair”. He said: “There’s that disappointment and frustration there, not to have got the result that gives us the series win, but this series has been fantastic to be a part of.
“It’s been full of ups and downs, ebbs and flows, throughout every game. India have been in control, we’ve been in control, it’s gone back to them and then it’s come back to us. To be a part of it has been pretty special. Obviously there is still that disappointment but for the wider game, and we want to constantly be promoting the game, this series has been great.”
At the end of his first series as India’s captain, to which he contributed 754 runs and four centuries, Shubman Gill said its – and his own – vacillating fortunes had demonstrated “how the game of life works”.
Gill said: “There are moments like this where you feel the journey is worth it. There’ve been a lot of highs and lows and that’s kind of expected in sport.
“Obviously every time you go into bat you want to perform, you want to score a century, but that’s not how the game of life works. You should be able to navigate through the highs and lows of life and stay balanced. I want to stay balanced whether we’ve won the match, lost the match, I’ve done well or not well. That’s the balance.
“This morning summarised what this team’s all about. The way Brook and Root were going [on Sunday], not many teams in the world would have given themselves a chance but this team believes that whenever we have an opening we can get through that opening. That’s what we were saying once Brook was out – this was our opening, and you never know.”
