Stokes sees decider as perfect warm-up for T20 World Cup

Ben Stokes welcomed the pressure of a winnertakes-all finale against India after England missed the chance to wrap up the Twenty20 cricket series in Ahmedabad.

Chasing 186 to take the fourth match, and with it an insurmountable 3-1 lead, England fell to an eight-run defeat that tied the teams up heading into tomorrow’s decider.

Stokes top-scored for the tourists with 46 in 23 balls but was undone in the pivotal passage of play as he and captain Eoin Morgan were dismissed off consecutive Shardul Thakur deliveries in the 17 th over.

Jofra Archer, who had never batted in his previous 10 appearances in the format, engineered some late drama with a couple of big hits off Thakur but, with 23 needed from the last over, the odds were against him.

While England would much rather be celebrating victory than analysing defeat, Stokes believes a must-win match at a ground that is set to hold the T20 World Cup final later this year is the kind of experience money cannot buy.

“In an ideal world we would have loved to have gone into the next game having won the series and it sounds weird saying it but we got a positive out of losing,” he said.

“We go into the next game with a huge amount of pressure on our shoulders as a team because whoever wins that game wins the series. It’s a final. That’s great for us as a team, especially with a T20 World Cup coming up.

“The more pressure situations we are put into as team, the better we’ll be for it. We want to win and we want to make a habit of winning.”