Blood sweat and tears went into this tour: Cook

With England not playing a Test in the next seven months, it was perhaps time for Cook to decide on his future as England’s captain but the 31-year-old remained non-committal on his future. “I’ve got to go away and do some thinking. This is not right time to make decisions as big as that. I need to go home first enjoy Christmas as much as I can do and then come back in January and look to plan with Straussy (Andrew Strauss) and see what’s the right decision for English cricket,” he said.

The England captain credited India for a dominating performance. “It’s tough, it’s been a tough tour. When you lose games of cricket it becomes very hard and it can be quite a lonely place. You’ve got to give credit to India. They’ve played some good cricket on the way. We knew it would be a pressurised day and at some stage we’d lose a couple of wickets in clusters. We weren’t good enough or skillful enough as players to stop that momentum,” Cook said.

“I’m gutted for the lads, it would have been great to escape with a draw but ultimately we weren’t good enough. Blood sweat and tears went into this tour but the bottom line is we weren’t good enough to compete with India and that’s hard to take,” Cook added.

The left-handed batsman said the England spinners weren’t up to the mark to cause irreversible damage to the opponents. “I think everyone can see we are suited to playing in seaming conditions. There’s no point hiding behind that fact. These conditions have tested us to our limits and I really don’t want to be disrespectful to Mo and Adil but they are not as good as Ashwin and Jadeja yet. They haven’t quite got the control and consistency, certainly in the first innings when there’s not much happening,” he added.