Stokes was happy with England’s approach to the chase and their performance in the game, especially his young spin attack, who lost Jack Leach and Joe Root to injury.
“Being 2-0 up would be great for us, but that’s the great thing about five-match series,” he said. “It’s the end of the series where everything counts. We’re a very level-headed team and that allows us to put things behind us, move on to the next thing and concentrate there. Last week we were pretty level even though we’d achieved something pretty special. We recognised that but we didn’t get too high. It’ll be the same this week, in the changing room we’re still very upbeat about some of the great stuff we’ve managed to do albeit not getting the result we wanted to.
“You look at especially how yesterday’s events went and I asked a lot of spinners who have six Tests between them. Bowling India out after Jimmy Anderson got those two wickets was an incredible effort. They just kept coming and coming at India.”
While Root recovered from a finger injury to bat, a number of England players – including Ollie Pope, Ben Foakes and Tom Hartley – woke up unwell on Monday as a virus hit the camp.
“There’s a bit of a virus going around, it’s not an excuse for the result or anything, because it’s a game full of ifs, buts and maybes,” said Stokes. “It’s something that is not ideal. You obviously want everyone to be 100 per cent and feeling great. But proud that the guys who were feeling under the weather didn’t shy away from anything they needed to do and gave it their best.”
Another pivotal moment in the chase saw Stokes run out in peculiar circumstances as he failed to set off quickly enough or dive to beat Shreyas Iyer’s dive.
