Cook defends England's slow batting, says gave India fight

Photo: BCCI Visakhapatnam: England skipper Alastair Cook today defended his team's approach of playing for a draw rather than trying to show more intent, after the visiting team's crushing 246-run defeat against India in the second Test here. The scorecard may have indicated a huge English defeat but Cook said there were many positive to take from the match. "What's giving me belief is over 10 days of cricket we have competed very well in India in their conditions. Yes we have lost by a big margin but the margin of runs is different. We could have played more aggressively and lost by 150 runs or so. But we went that way," Cook insisted. England score only 158 runs in 97.3 overs at a sluggish run rate off 1.62 in their second innings. Cook himself scored 54 runs off 188 balls, his slowest half-century in Test cricket. Cook, instead pointed out that his team had showed a lot of character in throwing a the fight back to India. "From losing those five wickets on day two, you have to score first-innings runs, but from that moment we showed a lot of character and fight," said, Cook. Counting on the positives before going into the third Test in Mohali, Cook said: "Adil Rashid has been excellent in these two games, a real step up for him. Ali bowled really well. Jimmy (James Anderson) is good on his comeback. So a lot of good things. We have got to put the whole game together to beat India. If we can get ahead of them in Mohali, then we can put pressure on them." Cook said losing the toss was "massive" and quipped a couple of 'good tosses' will turn England's fortune in the five-Test series, which they are training 0-1. "It was a massive toss to lose but in certain periods of game we played some good cricket. We can all agree it was a good toss to win. Anyone could see that. It's a disappointing loss but we can get ahead of the game then we can put India under pressure. We just got to do that right. We are still very much in the series. A couple of good tosses will help that, there's no doubt about that," said Cook. "It doesn't guarantee any result but on these wickets, it's been very advantageous to bat first. The first day was the best day to bat. You saw the scoring rates declined as opposed to the first day. It was harder to score. "And when you concede 455 and you're 80/5, it's a long way back. That cost us the game. But when you're behind it's always very hard to recover in these conditions. We did show some good skill and fight," he added.