“He played a fantastic innings. He played a lot of high-risk shots", head coach Rahul Dravid

If the brilliant Ollie Pope masterminded England’s plot, debutant left arm spinner Tom Hartley destroyed India on the fourth day.

The script went horribly wrong for Rohit Sharma and his boys as a spirited and aggressive England team deflated a clueless India by 28 runs to take a 1-0 lead in the five match Test series in front of over 29,000 at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Sunday. It was a rude awakening for India as England’s Bazball cricket flattened India even after conceding a huge 191 first innings lead. If the brilliant Ollie Pope masterminded England’s plot, debutant left arm spinner Tom Hartley destroyed India on the fourth day.

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India head coach Rahul Dravid gave full credit to Pope for his exceptional innings and praised Hartley for his fantastic bowling. Despite taking a huge lead, India tasted defeat. “That was a good fightback [by England]. Credit to the debutant [Hartley]. I thought he had a fantastic Test match. He scored 24 in the first and then took seven wickets in the second innings. He had a fantastic game.’’ Dravid added that it was always going to be challenging in India to score 234 in the second innings. It was Pope who swung the match in favour of England with an incredible innings of 196. 

“He played a fantastic innings. He played a lot of high-risk shots. I haven’t seen a better exhibition of sweeping and reverse-sweeping in these conditions. He executed them superbly. People have played some exceptional innings. But to be able to play that consistently and that successfully without making that many mistakes or the odd mistake here or there, I probably haven’t seen it for a long time. I think the sweep is something that we’ve seen people employ in the past. But to be able to play a reverse sweep that consistently and that successfully for that long… hats off...’’

The Indian coach did blame the batters for their poor shot selections in the first innings although it was challenging on Sunday. “I wouldn’t be so harsh to judge them today. In fact, if anything, I thought we left probably 70 runs on the board. In the first innings, the conditions were pretty good to bat in. I thought we got ourselves into some good starts. And we didn’t really capitalise. We didn’t get a big 100. So, in some ways, I just felt we left those 70-80 runs back in the board in the first innings; second innings is always going to be challenging.’’

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