England have not had a great time of it in the ongoing Ashes, with their weaknesses with the bat being comprehensively exposed and exploited by Australia. They won the fourth Test, by which point they had lost the series and have ended Day 1 of the fifth on a positive note. Overall, though, the fact remains that captain Ben Stokes and head coach Brendon McCullum’s approach of taking it easy with preparations before the series and sticking to their aggressive batting style has only backfired.
It wasn’t too long ago that England could only manage a 2-2 draw at home in a five-Test series against India. It was a memorable rubber, with every Test going into five days and quite a few flare-up between the two sets of players, one of which was St0kes being visibly frustrated at Ravindra Jadeja for not accepting a draw with centuries in sight for the latter and Washington Sundar. India batting great Sunil Gavaskar has now said that perhaps Stokes and the rest of the England players who mocked Jadeja and Sundar at the time now understand the value of century in a Test match.
“All those English players who mocked Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar when they opted to bat on and get to their centuries and not accept the offer to go off the field will have realised that Test match centuries don’t come every day,” said Gavaskar in his column for Mid-Day.
“Both the Indian batters had battled their way to their individual 80s and frustrated the bowlers and with another Test to go, were doing the tactical thing in keeping the fielders in the sun for some more time and were perfectly entitled to do so. Those who derided and mocked them then for batting on are finding in Australia that their bats have only edges or holes in the middle. Cricket is a great leveller and anybody who shows arrogance as different from confidence gets to learn that very quickly,” he said.
Stokes could at the time be heard mockingly asking Jadeja if he wants to get a centuries by batting against part-timers as he wanted to protect his fast bowlers at that point. It was a sequence of events for which he was almost universally criticised. However, Stokes later conceded that both Jadeja and Sundar deserved their centuries on the day.
