Media365
Legendary England cricket Geoffrey Boycott has slammed Ben Stokes and his team for showing the poor sportsmanship on the final day of the Manchester Test. Drama erupted at the start of the final hour of the match on Sunday when home skipper Ben Stokes offered to shake hands with Indian batters, realising that an outright result was not possible.
Jadeja and Washington batting on 89 and 80 respectively refused the offer, leaving the England captain frustrated. Stokes later said that he made the offer since he didn’t want to risk injury to his fatigued frontline bowlers.“There is no way I would have let anyone drag me off on 89 after I had worked hard all day to save the game for my team,” Geoffrey Boycott wrote in his column for The Telegraph. “Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar deserved their hundreds. They left the ball well, played with the full face of the bat and defended their wickets at all costs. Well done.“I’m not sure what it is with modern players. You hear a lot of them mouthing off. It never really happened when I was playing. It will carry on at the Oval and India will go there thinking they got a win at Old Trafford.“You learn more from failure than you do from success. And we failed to bowl India out. The draw highlighted the deficiencies in our bowling. If you think about it, when your best bowler in both innings is the England captain, who is a batsman-bowler, something is not right.” England are leading the five-match Test series 2-1. The final Test will be played at the Oval, starting from Thursday.
