Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], February 16 (ANI): England batting consultant Jonathan Trott wants his players to rotate the strike and pick the lengths early to tackle the India bowling on day four of the second Test.
England requires more than 400 runs to win the second Test while India needs seven wickets to level the series. Trott cited how Dan Lawrence batted on Monday weathered the storm and is positive about England’s batting in the fourth innings.
“Plan is to remain positive and look for runs as it is the best way to go about things we saw how Daniel Lawrence batted the other day. He played his options nicely and see how far we can go,” Trott told hosts’ broadcasters Star Sports.
“It’s up to each individual player who would have worked hard. Don’t forget that they also have seam options and we have to combat that. Rotate strike, picking up length quickly and moving your feat obviously and just back your options,” he added.
India skipper Virat Kohli played a gutsy knock of 62 runs while spinner Ravichandran Ashwin took the game away from England with his brilliant Test ton.
“Depends really on their contact points and where they wanna get at close to the pitch of the ball or try and give much time to adjust to spin or bounce is, whether it is getting their feet to get out on spin when the ball is full rather or getting back to the stumps when the ball is shorter,” said Trott
“You watch everybody about their business to score runs to pick up few of their characteristics but then we have players to have their own characteristics who can go about the scoring of themselves,” he added.
Ben Foakes was the lone survivor in the first innings for England and Trott wants his batsmen to emulate the wicket-keeper in the second essay.
“It’s always nice to see we can score runs on this we see how Foakes batted in the first innings and definitely we can some more of the same. This pitch is a lot of tricky,” said Trott
On Monday, after losing openers early, England sent Jack Leach as nightwatchman but that move also did not work for the visitors. Leach was sent back to the pavilion on a single ball duck by Patel. Root and Lawrence played cautiously and made sure that the side did not suffer any hiccup on the day.
In the final session, 31.5 overs were bowled as both the teams together scored 118 runs with a loss of five wickets. (ANI)