Daily Times

Dharamsala: England captain Ben Stokes said Wednesday his team had “progressed” during their tough tour of India, with debutants Tom Hartley and Shoaib Bashir shining despite the tourists losing the five-match series. The visitors won the opener but India bounced back to win the next three ahead of the final match in Dharamsala starting Thursday.

“At 3-1 you think it’s not been a success but I look at it with completely different angles to that and I think we’ve definitely progressed as a team, even though we haven’t got the results we wanted,” Stokes told reporters. “But you say India haven’t had some of their best players, you look at the players we came out here with. We were written off completely before we had even played a game this series,” he added. “Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, people couldn’t believe we’d picked them. Look at what they’ve managed to achieve on this trip.”

Hartley, a left-arm spinner who made his debut in the opening match of the series, leads the bowling with 20 wickets in four matches. Bashir missed the opener due to a visa issue but came back to bag 12 wickets in the two matches he played. England have made one change to their line-up for the final match with Mark Wood replacing fellow quick Ollie Robinson, who went wicketless in the team’s previous loss.

“Before we even got here we were probably thinking it was going to be a three seamer one spinner attack,” said Stokes. “But then when we saw the wicket and then saw it again today, I think going with two seamers and two spinners is probably the right call.”