Stokes' superhuman effort Captain goes to 'dark places' as he inspires epic England win

Ben Stokes said he expended every last ounce of his energy in pursuit of victory after England brought an end to a day of slow-building drama and mounting tension with the defeat of India by the wafer-thin margin of 22 runs in the third Test.

- Simon Burnton

"I thought I had taken myself to some pretty dark places before," he said, "but today..."

A game in which both sets of players sometimes allowed their emotions to boil over - behaviour that Stokes said he was "all for" - ended when Shoaib Bashir, playing through the pain of a broken finger that will rule him out for the final two Tests, dismissed Mohammed Siraj to put England 2-1 up in the series.

"Obviously it was a great game, a close game," said Stokes, who hauled himself through mammoth spells of 9.2 and 10 overs across the final day. "You'd think I should be saying it was [one of my best wins], but it's just quite hard to get my head around it at the moment. When you're physically and emotionally tired, it's hard to know."

He said his celebrations were "some of the most subdued I've ever been in" because of the effort put in to get England over the line.