- England will start day four 244 runs behind India, who have nine wickets intact
- But Harry Brook is refusing to give in and he believes England can still get a win
- Brook registered his ninth Test century during England’s first innings this week
Harry Brook insisted on Friday evening that England can still win the second Rothesay Test against India at Edgbaston despite the tourists’ building a commanding lead.
India will resume on Saturday morning 244 runs ahead with nine second-innings wickets intact, but the situation would have been a lot worse but for a scintillating triple century stand between Brook and Jamie Smith.
‘Everybody in the world knows that we are going to try to chase whatever they set us,’ said Brook, after hitting 158, his ninth Test hundred.
‘We have obviously got a big task at hand, but we will try to get a couple of wickets early on and put them under pressure.
‘They are in front at minute but if get three or four, you never know how this game can go – as we saw last week when we got seven for 30 runs and then seven for 40 runs.’
England chased down a target of 371 to go 1-0 up at Headingley, but a collapse of their own to 84 for five here in Birmingham jeopardised their chances of holding onto the series lead.
England batsman Harry Brook pictured raising his bat after reaching his ninth Test hundred
Brook and Jamie Smith (right) shared a record 303-run stand for the fifth wicket against India
However, Smith made light of walking to the middle on a hat-trick, rocketing to England’s joint-third fastest hundred off 80 balls and sharing in a 303-run alliance with Brook that was only ended when the Yorkshireman, battling cramp, succumbed to the second new ball.
Smith remained unbeaten on 184, the highest score by an England wicketkeeper, after Mohammad Siraj sliced through the lower order in a six-wicket display.
‘It was good fun being out there with Smudge, he’s a phenomenal player. He tried to change the momentum back in our favour and it worked for a long period of time,’ continued Brook.
‘It was so good to watch from the other end, he was trying to hit a four or six every ball and I was just trying to give him strike.’
