Ben Stokes said he expended every last ounce of his energy in pursuit of victory after England brought an end to a day of slow-building drama and mounting tension with the defeat of India by the wafer-thin margin of 22 runs in the third Test. “I thought I had taken myself to some pretty dark places before,” he said, “but today …”
A game in which both sets of players sometimes allowed their emotions to boil over – behaviour that Stokes said he was “all for” – ended when Shoaib Bashir, playing through the pain of a broken finger that will rule him out for the final two Tests, dismissed Mohammed Siraj to put England 2-1 up in the series.