Ben Stokes Picture Credit: BCCI
All-rounder Ben Stokes apologised to his late father after he failed to reach his hundred in the second ODI against India at the MCA Stadium in Pune. The England southpaw looked in sublime touch during his game-changing innings of 99 as he smashed 10 enormous sixes in a power-packed performance. However, Bhuvneshwar Kumar dismissed him while he was on 99 which is when Stokes looked skywards and said "sorry." Notably, Stokes' father Ged lost a long battle to brain cancer in December last year.
Watch the emotional moment here:
Although India had posted 336/6 batting first, thanks to a hundred from KL Rahul and half-centuries from Rishabh Pant and Virat Kohli, England made a mockery of India's bowling effort. Jason Roy departed for 55 after a fluent half-century, thanks to some brilliant work on the field by Rohit Sharma. Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes then combined with a superb counter-attacking partnership which took the game away from India. Bairstow and Stokes, in fact, put on a six-hitting exhibition, scoring as many as 17 sixes between them with the latter hitting 10 of them alone.
Bairstow completed a fantastic hundred and even though the duo couldn't complete the chase, they had done enough damage to put their team in a comfortable position. Dawid Malan and debutant Liam Livingstone finished off the chase with 39 balls remaining, helping the visitors level the 3-match series 1-1. The two teams will now meet on Sunday at the same venue for the highly-anticipated decider.