Vizag: With England gasping for breath after losing half their side on day two, assistant coach Paul Farbrace on Friday urged his batsmen to show resilience and fight back to save the second Test against India.
In reply to India’s 455 runs, England were struggling at 103/5 at stumps on day two, still 352 behind as Ravichandran Ashwin (2/20) picked two crucial wickets and debutant Jayant Yadav (1/11) chipped in with one from seven overs.
“We knew it would be tough. We knew it’s going to turn. We knew there would be variable bounce. They have got high quality spin attack. There’s nothing that happened today from a pitch or their bowling point of view that surprised us,” Farbrace said.
“We knew India would bounce back, there’s no point regretting about it. There’s no point making any excuse. We got to adapt and adapt quickly if they’re going to have a long international career.
“There was that period where we looked like we got a bit frenetic, we didn’t cope particularly well and those are times when you’ve got to show a little bit more resilience and fight,” he added.
“What we’ve got to do is cope better under pressure. We had a period today which was meek and mild, a bit soft. We’ve got to get these periods out. Having fought back this morning, it’s not a position we want to be in. It’s pretty disappointing,” he said.
“The key thing for tomorrow morning, and it is a very old cliche, is that we bat until drinks,” he added.
