England are on the verge of sealing another Test victory, their seventh on the trot. Although Ben Stokes’ side are quite ahead of their opponents, his decision to enforce the follow-on was questioned by a contingent of fans.
Former England all-rounder and current assistant coach of the Test team, Paul Collingwood, backed the decision of English skipper to invite the home side to bat again after bundling them out for 209 runs in the morning session of the third day.
“We’re ahead of the game. We felt as though we could cause a lot of problems, which we did, but we didn’t get the rewards for it. There were a lot of great things from today. It’s the aggressive approach and that’s how we try to do things. It was very clear in Stokesy’s mind when we turned up this morning that if we had the chance to enforce the follow-on we would be taking it. We never take a backward step,” assistant coach Collingwood told BBC Sport.
We never restrict this team or think about how many is too many: Collingwood
“We don’t look at targets and we never restrict this team or think about how many is too many. We are in a very good position in this game. The morning sessions seem to be doing a lot more for the seam bowlers, so hopefully we can make serious inroads with the new ball tomorrow and have a total we can chase,” Collingwood added.
