Former England cricket team skipper Michael Vaughan believes that Ben Stokes and Co. have done ‘a bit too much moaning’ about DRS decisions in the Ranchi Test series against India. Vaughan has been a vocal critic of the DRS calls but he believes it is not the reason why England are currently trailing 1-2 in the five-match series, with the fourth Test tilted heavily towards the hosts. In his column for The Telegraph, Vaughan wrote that England may feel like big decisions have gone against them but they have allowed the game to slip away both in Rajkot and Ranchi after solid starts.
“I think England have done a bit too much moaning about it in this series. Yes, there have been a couple of strange-looking decisions. Ollie Pope has had a couple of LBWs in the first innings in the last two Tests. Zak Crawley has had a couple too, the one where Kuldeep Yadav trapped him leg-before in Vizag, and the one in Rajkot that saw the match referee seek out Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum to explain that there had been a little error in the pictures shown on screen,” Vaughan wrote.
I understand how in the high-pressure environment of a massive Test series the world can feel like it’s against you, but it’s not why England are in the situation they find themselves in in this game or this series. That is because, just like in Rajkot, on moving day, day three, they let the game slip. They need to think long and hard about why that is happening, and it is really not because of DRS, even if Joe Root is a very important player and his decision today was very marginal,” he added.
Dhruv Jurel’s defensive chef-d’oeuvre found a perfect match in the destructive symphony of spin by fifer-man Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav as India seized decisive control of the fourth Test.
India walked off at the stumps, having chiselled off 40 runs from the 192-run target without losing a wicket. Rohit Sharma (24 batting) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (16 batting) would be confident of the team mustering the remaining 152 runs without much theatre.
However, it was Jurel who started India’s resistive movement with a defiant 90 that came in 149 balls and 211 minutes. It carried the hosts to 307 in their first innings from the overnight 219 for seven.
In their second essay, England just did not have any answers to the questions posed by Ashwin (5/51), his 35th five-wicket haul in Tests, and Kuldeep Yadav (4/22), getting bowled out for a meagre 145.
(With PTI inputs)
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