India’s morale high despite close defeat

India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said the team remains in good spirits despite losing two Tests they were in a position to win.

“That might be counterintuitive when you’re 2-1 down in the series. But we feel like the guys have been excellent for large parts of the series. The repetition of losing lots of wickets in a very short space of time has obviously been the key feature of the two losses,” he said.

“Probably both times — in Headingley and obviously overnight and first thing in the morning at Lord’s — we feel cost us the game was losing six wickets for 40 again. But if you look at it individually, if you look at the run tally of all the batters they’re all batting nicely. Even someone like Karun Nair, we feel his rhythm is good, his tempo is good. We want more runs from the three. But the message is mainly, let’s really focus on what we’ve done well and tidy up the little things that have cost us results, essentially,” he added.

Pant expected to be fit for fourth Test

Wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, nursing a finger injury, did not train on Thursday but made the trip to Beckenham with the squad. Pant was only part of the warm-up routine and also spent some time in the gym. He is expected to regain full fitness for the Manchester game. “He batted with quite a lot of pain in the third Test and it’s only going to get easier and easier on his finger. Keeping is obviously the last part of the process to make sure that he can keep. We don’t want to go through that again where we have to replace the keeper halfway through the innings. We’re just trying to give him the rest as long as possible and hopefully he’s good to go in Manchester in the first training session,” said India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate.

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