After losing in under two days, England captain Joe Root felt that had his team done better in the first innings after a good start, the outcome could have been different.
“We are bitterly disappointed, I feel we have missed an opportunity, more so in the first innings,” said Root.
“The position we found ourselves in, at 74 for two, in hindsight, if we would have got 200, that would have been a very good score on that wicket and the game would have looked completely different. We have got to get better and we are going to keep looking to find a way of scoring runs on surfaces like this.”
The English skipper also cited the struggles of India’s batsmen — who are used to such conditions — to buttress his point on the difficulty of run-making.
When put on the spot about whether the pitch was fit for Test cricket, Root deflected the question, saying, “I think that this surface, it’s a very challenging one, is a very difficult one to play on. It is not for players to decide whether it is fit for purpose or not, and that is up to the ICC.”
The 30-year-old also felt that the pink ball was a significant factor in batsmen being beaten for pace. “The plastic coating and the hardness of the seam compared to the red SG ball meant it gathered pace off the pitch if it hit the shiny side and that had a big part to play in things. Credit to Axar [Patel] for exploiting that exceptionally well.”