England have called up Gus Atkinson for Thursday’s third Test against India as they seek to refresh a bowling group that toiled through 234 overs at Edgbaston in a losing cause.
Ben Stokes admitted his side’s travails on the way to a humbling 336-run defeat had left them needing to repair both their bodies and their morale, with barely 72 hours in which to do it. “We’re disappointed, but we’ve got three days to turn around, so we need to get over this one just like we got over the enjoyment and the excitement of winning the first game – we need to flip our heads around,” he said.
Atkinson’s own fitness is not entirely certain, although he should certainly not be fatigued: the 27-year-old has not played since May, having sustained a hamstring strain during England’s one-off Test against Zimbabwe.
A tight turnaround before the series resumes at Lord’s – the team will have only two days off, though many plan to play golf together on Tuesday before a single day’s training ahead of the next game – leaves little time for recuperation. India rested their premier bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, in Birmingham, and in the series so far all of England’s frontline seamers have bowled more, and spent considerably longer in the field, than any of their opponents.
England’s squad for the third Test also includes the two seamers that went unused at Edgbaston: Essex’s Sam Cook, who played his first and so far only game for the side against Zimbabwe, and Jofra Archer, whose appearance for Sussex against Durham last month marked a return to first-class cricket after a four-year absence and is now in line for a first Test cap since February 2021.
“The efforts we all put in as a bowling unit there, especially the big quicks – they keep charging in but it’s no secret that we have spent some time in the field and bowled some overs in the first two games, and we’ll have to see how everyone pulls up over the next two days,” said Stokes, the England captain.
“With it being a quick turnaround there probably will be a decision we have to make.”
Both teams expressed surprise and disappointment in the pitch that was produced at Edgbaston, even if the fact that England’s top four averaged just 12 suggests they did not find it too placid. Stokes said that “as the game got deeper it was pretty obvious it was not playing the way we thought it was going to”, and that “the longer it played out, the more it was suiting the Indian team over our team”.
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The England coach, Brendon McCullum, said the team was flexible with its plans but admitted that the decision at the toss to bowl first had been “slightly wrong”.
“I think as the game unfolded we probably looked back on that toss and said: ‘Did we miss an opportunity there?’ We didn’t expect that the wicket would play quite as it did, and hence we probably got it slightly wrong,” he said. “We’re not rigid with our plans, it’s just we thought this pitch might get better to bat on as we went through the five days, but as we saw it didn’t.”
