London: England captain Andrew Strauss termed his sides victory over the Indians as “outstanding” and said he can’t praise his team enough for the splendid performance.
“It was an outstanding Test match and an outstanding performance,” he said.
As far as Kevin Pietersen’s double ton and Stuart Broad’s all-round efforts were concerned, Strauss said, “KP’s innings was one of the best I’ve seen by an England batsmen in recent times. Broad showed his quality with both bat and ball. The wicket was flat, we had to build pressure and stick to it.
“It’s always tough to bowl sides out here on the fifth day, if you’re going to do it you have to be very disciplined and I can’t praise the bowlers highly enough,” he added.
Strauss said it was tough bowling on the flat wicket but they backed themselves to take 20 wickets.
“It was very tough batting conditions on the first morning, as tough as I’ve encountered here. We back ourselves to bowl teams out, we back ourselves to get 20 wickets,” he said.
“It’s hard work on flat wickets but we expect to do that. India are a very very good side, they showed glimpses of that this game and they’ll improve as the series continues.”
Pietersen was named the man of the match for his outstanding innings of unbeaten 202 in the first innings and the former England skipper said it would have meant nothing to him had the team not won.
“Brilliant for the team. If we would not have won, it would not have mattered,” said Pietersen.
“It is just one out of four. It will be a tough job to dominate this Indian team. It reminded me of 2005 at Old Trafford, it was a special occasion. All bases seem to be covered in this team but but we know not to relax.” (PTI)