England captain Ben Stokes feels his team can still make a comeback in the five-match Test series after a 434-run loss in the third Test in Rajkot. With questions being raised on their ultra-attacking approach (which the cricket world calls Bazball) after two failed attempts, Stokes admits people in the dressing room back the idea of attacking from ball one and will continue to stick with it.

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England kept themselves alive in this game until the end of day two, only for one poor shot from Joe Root to hamper their momentum and pave way for defeat. India dominated the game afterwards, with young Jaiswal notching up his second double hundred of this series and helping his team march towards the win.

As India now leads the series 2-1, Stokes said his team has all the potential to turn it around from this point and walk away with a 3-2 series win.

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“Everyone’s got a perception and opinion about things,” Stokes said during the post-match presentations. “But again, the people in the dressing room are the opinions that really matter to us.

“We know that things don’t always work out exactly how you want it to, but at 2-1 down in the series, still got two games left, so we’ve got a great chance to come home with the trophy at 3-2,” Stokes told broadcasters after Rajkot game loss.

Stokes said while it’s not easy to take a defeat like that, his team will try putting this behind them and work towards achieving better results in the upcoming Tests.

“We’ll make sure that we’re moving on and focusing on what we’ve got coming up ahead because games can be won and lost in the head. We’ll be leaving all the emotion and disappointment from this week, and moving on to the next one,” the England captain added.

‘I’ve got an unbelievable belief in myself’ 

Stokes addressed the elephant in the room talking about England’s collapse early on day three, with Root’s ‘worst shot of the century’ as labelled by one of England’s newspapers, also being discussed. Stokes said England had to put the foot on the paddle if they were to go for the win, but, unfortunately, they failed in their attempt this time.

Talking about his shot to Jadeja, which led to his wicket, Stokes said, “If you look at the situation we found ourselves in going into day three, to give ourselves a chance of winning, we had to try and press the button after the lunch break.” 

“They got some quick wickets, so we had to absorb the pressure that India threw at us there. But personally, I sensed that as an opportunity after lunch to go out and have ‘one of my days out’, we’ll call it.”

“I’ve got an unbelievable belief in myself that I can do that,” he added. 

“Just like I have an unbelievable belief in every individual in there that, on their day, they can turn the game in our favour. We wanted to be bowling at the back end of day three, that came a lot earlier than we wanted to, but that’s how some things go. Nothing goes your way all the time,” Stokes added.

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