Follow UsWith 536 runs needed and just seven wickets in hand, there’s only one realistic best-case scenario for England at Edgbaston, and that’s a draw. However, the team under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have consistently reiterated over the last three years that they ‘don’t play for draws’.
In 38 Tests in the Bazball era, England have thus far remarkably drawn just one game, which was the fourth Ashes Test in 2023, which was marred by rain.
England assistant coach Marcus Trescothick insisted that his team are not ‘stupid enough’ to think that there are only two results, but he asserted that the management will leave it to the players to figure out what’s the best course of action.
"I don't think we use that sort of language. It's not the sort of changing room that we are,” Trescothick said after day four, when asked if the management will ask the batters to shut shop and draw the game.
“We're not naive enough to know that it's a very challenging total. Do you just go in your bunker and just sort of dig it out? Some players may do that.
"Whenever the situation is changing, of course, it [the draw] is [a good result]. When you get to the point that you can [only] draw the game, of course. We're not stupid enough to [think] that you have to just win or lose.
“There are three results possible in every game that you play. But we have done some things in our time that are different to what we've done before.”
The England assistant coach said that his team will likely take a call on whether to go for the chase after playing out the first 10-15 overs, assessing the situation at that point.
"We all probably appreciate that it's a hell of a lot of runs to try and score. It's 550 [536] tomorrow and I don't think we've seen scoring rates quite that quick in a day, so of course it will be challenging. But we've probably about another 10 to 15 overs of the balls at the hardest point before it gets a little bit soft, and then we'll see how we're going from that point, really,” he said.
Flooded by questions about past comments where England have said that they won’t ever play for the draw, Trescothick said that the media has a different perception of the English dressing room as opposed to what actually goes on inside.
"This has kind of built up away from probably what the changing room messages are," he said.
"You guys have a perception of what you think goes on in the changing room, and we obviously understand it a little bit more [than] the perception of what we're trying to do.
"We're trying to give the players the best opportunity to win games every time that we go out to play, and then if we can't do that, then we try and adapt accordingly, and plan ahead to what we're going to try and do."