The 'Rishabh Pant factor' forced us to delay the declaration - Root

England had a lead of over 350, commentators were of the opinion that Root will need around 4 sessions to get India bowled out in the second innings yet, England kept on batting that surprised many cricket fanatics. Had India drew the match, Joe Root would have been in the firing line of the experts but India failed to resist the top class English bowling and lost the match by 227 runs. The England skipper has now revealed the reason for their prolonged batting. Joe Root said that the ‘Rishabh Pant’ factor forced them to delay their declaration. He said that the team wanted to make sure that only two results were possible in the match.

"We could have declared earlier, for sure, we could have. I wanted to make sure that there were only two results possible in this game. I wanted to make sure that we turned up today with the ball still being hard. We wanted to give our bowlers an extra bit of time to be raring to go," Root told reporters at the virtual press conference.

"We wanted to get to 400 and then we wanted to press the accelerator. Actually, it was going to be really important that we had runs on the board as it was a fast outfield," he added.

 

Rishabh Pant has been in fine form of late and has played few match defining knocks for India. In the fourth Test of The Border Gavaskar Trophy in Brisbane, Pant played a quick fire knock of 89* to help India chase 328. Joe Root further stated that if Pant bats for one session he can change the complexion of the game and he wanted his bowlers to go for the wickets and rather than worrying about containing runs.

"Rishabh Pant bats for one session and he can make things quite interesting. I did not want the pressure of having to contain and as well as take wickets. I wanted to make sure that the bowlers were concentrating on the ways of finding the wickets on that surface”

England bowlers were right on the money as the bowled India out for 192 to hand England their sixth consecutive victory in away Tests.