New Delhi, March 11 Former Australia captain Ian Chappell believes England skipper Ben Stokes’ aggressive style of captaincy faltered at a crucial time in the fourth Test at Ranchi, which in turn propelled India to win the match and grab the series in their favour.
Under Stokes leadership, England have played an attacking brand of cricket and won 10 out of first 11 Tests. But they haven’t won a series of late, drawing 1-1 with New Zealand and 2-2 with Australia before recently going down 4-1 to India.
"Rohit Sharma and Ben Stokes have waged an intriguing captaincy battle in their Test series. However, Stokes' aggressive leadership faltered at a crucial time and India - well led by Rohit - claimed the series with a resounding victory in the fourth Test in Ranchi.
"On the third evening Stokes desperately needed to start India's chase with his best two bowlers and try to claim at least one wicket. Incredibly, he gave the ball to a part-timer, Joe Root, and ignored the experienced, probing bowling of Jimmy Anderson. India took full advantage and scored an invaluable 40 runs off just eight overs.
"Stokes missed a trick in Ranchi. He then compounded his error by allowing too many easy singles on the final day by resorting to some cautious field placings. At a time when Stokes needed to be extremely brave as captain and hope he got lucky, he was abnormally conservative," wrote Chappell in his column for ESPNCricinfo.
Chappell also felt Stokes providing India easy singles in the chase, led by an unbeaten 72-run stand between Shubman Gill and Dhruv Jurel after an 84-run opening stand between captain Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal, made the task of winning an easy one for the hosts’.
"Stokes missed a trick in Ranchi. He then compounded his error by allowing too many easy singles on the final day by resorting to some cautious field placings. At a time when Stokes needed to be extremely brave as captain and hope he got lucky, he was abnormally conservative.
"India probably would still have won but at least by going on the attack, Stokes would have given England their best chance of an upset victory. Stokes could improve his captaincy in demanding chases if he took the example of the leadership master in those situations - Pakistan's Javed Miandad.”
"Rohit proceeded to take full advantage of the tentative field placings with a thoughtful innings and India's solid opening partnership helped seal victory. The second innings should have been a time to force the Indian batters into taking a risk, but by allowing easy singles, Stokes gave his opponents the upper hand.
"He also needed to use the experience and guile of Anderson to try and force the issue on the third evening but instead relied on the part-time spin of Root. The use of Root could probably be put down to an over-reliance on the right-left combination to get the wicket of India's accomplished opener Yashasvi Jaiswal. There are times when good captaincy hinges on gut feel rather than statistics or theories; this was such an occasion," he concluded.
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