England need to learn quickly: Root

Chennai, Feb 16: It’s a ‘bit of an education’ for us, admitted England captain Joe Root after being “outplayed” by India in the second Test while imploring his players to quickly learn their lessons, including some from the hosts. Spinners Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin shared the spoils to crush England by 317 runs and bring their team back in contention for the World Test Championship final with the series-levelling victory. ‘It’s a bit of an education. We’ve got to quickly learn from this because sometimes these are the conditions that you come up against,” Root said at the post-match press conference. He refused to believe it’s the end of the road for England’s prospects in the four-match series, taking inspiration from their performances in the recent past. “As I said after the last game it’s really important that we stay level. We don’t get too far above our station when we win and we don’t see it as doom and gloom when we have tough weeks like we have this time round. ‘We’ve played some really good cricket over the recent past, in challenging conditions, very foreign conditions, and we’ve been, let’s be honest, outplayed in all three departments this week.” (PTI)