'A feeling only sport can give you' - Stokes

2 years ago 52

Ben Stokes celebrating the winning wicket with his team-mates

Captain Ben Stokes praised a "special" radical of England players aft they beat Pakistan for 1 of their top Test victories.

Jack Leach took the decisive wicket astatine the extremity of a nerve-shredding last time with lone minutes remaining arsenic the airy rapidly faded successful Rawalpindi.

It is lone their 3rd triumph successful Pakistan and archetypal for 22 years.

"I conjecture it's 1 of those feelings that lone athletics tin springiness you," Stokes told BBC Test Match Special.

"The toil of everyone from the past league yesterday to everyone today, it's 1 of those existent radical efforts to travel retired present and instrumentality 20 wickets.

"The mode successful which we operated contiguous and the mode that everyone threw themselves into the situation of what we had to bash was incredible.

"We've got a dressing country with immoderate beauteous sore bodies up there. But they've done it for each different and it's a existent motion of our dressing country astatine the moment.

"Everyone is doing what they request to astatine the clip for the different 10 blokes astir them. It's a large spot to be."

Stokes acceptable up the level for a 74-run triumph with a bold declaration astatine beverage connected time four, giving Pakistan a triumph people of 343 successful 4 sessions connected a slow, lifeless transportation that had offered small for the bowlers passim the match.

Pakistan reached 257-5 astatine beverage connected the last day, meaning each 4 results were inactive imaginable adjacent arsenic the airy diminished successful the evening session.

"The declaration was a beauteous casual determination due to the fact that of however we privation to approach, not lone the mode we privation to play, but the mode successful which Test cricket should beryllium played," said Stokes.

"Allowing the crippled to extremity successful a gully is thing we person nary involvement successful doing.

"We knew it would bring america into the crippled and the lone crushed we've been capable to find ourselves present is due to the fact that of the mode everyone plays their cricket astatine the infinitesimal and the willingness for the bowlers to conscionable propulsion themselves into being attacking bowlers and not taking the casual option.

"There were nary complaints astir the wicket oregon anything. We conscionable got connected with it and dealt with it.

"It's astonishing the mode this radical operates. Everyone plays for the idiosyncratic adjacent to them. It's a truly peculiar radical of men."

Across the BBC banner