“Hindsight is a beautiful thing,” Harry Brook said after his team lost the Test match and the chance to win the series by just six runs. Six runs aren’t that big a deal. Take a single each ball of the over, and you’ll have them. Dispatch a loose ball to the pavilion, and bingo. But the chances of all of that happening when there is one (and a half, with due respect to Chris Woakes) wicket left become increasingly slim. Which is why Brook rues ending his innings with a shot that, if it had gone well, would have ended the game in England’s favour. Hindsight really is beautiful, but it’s also brutal.
“My thought process was just to try and hit as many runs as quick as possible,” Brook said at the post-match presentation. “Like I said, the game’s done if we need 40 runs with me and Rooty in there; if I get out there [with 40 to win], the game’s still done. Obviously, it didn’t work. I wish now that I didn’t play that shot and get out.”
Brook’s dismissal opened the floodgates of England’s collapse that ended with the game itself. He scored a 98-ball 111 that, along with Joe Root’s century, changed the course of the game. In his attempt to wrap up the game quickly, he miscued a shot off Akash Deep, trying to go for a third consecutive boundary. Shortly after, Root had to make his way back to the pavilion as well, with England ending the fourth day with two new batters at the crease. The next morning, Mohammad Siraj grabbed two wickets in consecutive overs, deepening the rot further for England.
“At the time, I was obviously very confident. If I’d have got a quick 30 off the next two overs, then the game is done. That was my thought process. I always try and take the game on and put them under immense pressure… I wish I was there at the end, but you can’t write them things.
“I had no idea that we were going to lose seven wickets for 60 runs. You’ve got arguably the best Test cricketer in the world out there at the time as well in Rooty, and in the back of my mind, [I thought] I’d try and get as many runs as quickly as possible and the game is done. I had every faith in Rooty that he was going to be there at the end.”
Ben Stokes, however, didn’t blame Brook for being reckless on his way out. Quite the contrary, he praised the batter for his quick century that gave England a chance at winning in the first place.
“Harry got us into that position by playing a particular way, putting the Indian bowlers under immense pressure to take them away from being able to consistently bowl the areas that they wanted to bowl in,” he said. “I’m sure everyone was applauding him when he brought up his hundred in the way that he did. Some of the shots he played were unbelievable. The dismissal and the way that he got out was a shot that we’d seen a lot of him do in that innings, which I’m sure was getting a lot of praise.”
At the start of the fifth day, Jamie Overton and Jamie Smith were at the crease, with England still 35 runs short of the win. Brook said he was confident that the two batters were capable of seeing England home. Overton began with a couple of well-timed fours off Prasidh Krishna, but Smith’s departure in the next over brought the morale down by miles.
“I came into the day this morning very confident,” he said. “We had two very good players out there at the time, and I just thought we were going to easily see it home. The way that the Indians fought back there and the way that Siraj bowled especially, I think he deserved every success there.
“We were thinking the bowlers would stiffen up a bit [overnight] and the pitch would be a little bit flatter, but obviously with the overcast conditions – lights on again – it started to zip around a bit. Like I said before, Siraj, he’s played five Test matches in a row, bowled 85mph-plus every ball, and he’s had a phenomenal series. I respect him a lot for what he’s done this series.”
