England still in the game, feels Bairstow

“We need to keep fighting. I think we could create more opportunities in the field. As a wicket-keeper I always look at guys to be fielding at the right positions. I think we came back strong in the match, we took three wickets in the evening and that some positive we can take out at the end of the day,” Bairstow said at the post match press conference. 

Bairstow and Stokes put on a century partnership to delay India’s chances of making early inroads into the match. On batting with Stokes, Bairstow said it was difficult to point on a specific point. “We complement each other as we form a left-right combination. We rotated the strike well and it quite worked nice. We had a lot of chats and that gave us the confidence,” the 27-year-old said. 

Bairstow admitted that it would be hard to score runs in the fourth innings on a pitch that was taking a sizeable amount turn. “It is definitely hard to make runs. There is a lot of uneven bounce. It would be a case of gritting out teeth and bat for a long period and score runs on sub-continent wickets. At the end of the day it is a run chase and we have the batters to score. Early wickets on Sunday morning could change the tone of the match,” he added.