The England skipper Ben Stokes finds himself in a 'handshake controversy' after the end of the fourth Test at Manchester against India, which ended in a draw. It was seen that Stokes wanted Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar to shake hands on Day 5 and settle the match in a draw, as the result was already known by everyone. Both the Indian duos were very close to their hundreds and refused Stokes from doing so, to which the England captain thought of giving the ball to Harry Brook, a player who isn't even known as a part-time bowler.
Stokes did not praise Jadeja and Sundar for their incredible knocks in the field but did talk about them and their knocks in the press conference.
He said,
"The knock that those two played was very, very good. The situation that India found themselves in there, with us opening the game slightly, that partnership was massive. You hold your hands up; they played incredibly, incredibly well. And I don't think there would've been too much more satisfaction from walking off at 100 not out, getting your team out of a tricky situation, than walking off at 80 or 90 not out. That's what you've done for your team. You know, the 10 more runs or whatever it was aren't going to change the fact that you've managed to get your team out of a very, very, very tricky situation and almost saved your team from a series defeat before the last game."
The decision made by Stokes was criticized by many, and when he was asked about the same in the conference, he said that since a result was out of the question, he was in no mood to risk his key bowlers in the last few overs.
He said,
"I think we took the game as far as we could with our frontline bowlers to take it as far as we could to think like we've got a real chance of still winning this game. But as soon as it got to that point where the draw was inevitable here, I was never going to risk any of my frontline bowlers with the short turnaround that we have and the workload that we've got through this week and throughout the series as well. So yeah, as soon as, you know, the 15 overs or last hour was there, it was always going to be a handshake."
Further, he said,
"As I said, the only other person who's actually got any bowling workload into them is Harry Brook. But I did have to tell him, Please don't do anything stupid.' We spent a lot of time out in the field; we can't have you pulling aside or doing anything different. Naturally, you'll be fatigued, even if you don't bowl. So I was just like, just get through this period. But yeah, I wasn't going to risk any of my, you know, proper bowling options in that situation when we knew what was going on."
Meanwhile, Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir had different views on the same. According to him, Jadeja and Sundar deserved to get their hundreds, no matter what the result of the game was offering.
The fifth Test will commence on July 31 at the Oval, which will be a do-or-die match for both the teams in the five-match test series. Now it will be interesting to see which team will be winning the series or whether the series will end in a draw.