WE COULD HAVE CREATED NINE CHANCES ON FINAL DAY: ROOT

England skipper Joe Root admitted that Indian team were on top on day five of the opening Test but the hosts’ captain was confident of dismissing the remaining nine visitors batsmen on Sunday.

The first Test between England and India ended in a draw after Day five of the match was abandoned due to rain on Sunday. India needed just 157 runs to win the first Test on day five while England needed nine wickets but no play was possible due to rain. The visitors had scored 52 runs after bundling out England in the third session on Saturday.

“At one stage it looked like we could have potentially had 40 overs and I think in that period, it felt like we would have been able to create nine chances on the surface like that,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Root as saying. “I’d be lying if I wasn’t to say that India weren’t in the driving seat going into today, but we know on a wicket like that, a couple of wickets in a cluster and of course that game can turn on its head,” he added.

The English skipper feels the pressure of batting on the final day of the Test could have tilted the match in England’s favour. “With the pressures of batting on a fifth-day wicket, things could very quickly have fallen in our favour and we certainly believed that we’d have been able to create nine more chances,” said Root.

“If we’d have been good enough in the field and taken those then we could have been sat here one-nil up, but unfortunately the weather has won,” he added.