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IND vs ENG 2nd Test: England captain Ben Stokes blamed his team's 336-run defeat on the Edgbaston pitch, which he claimed the strip in Birmingham ended up suiting India more and morphed into a "sub-continent" style surface as the match progressed.

Despite the pitch flattening as the match proceeds, Stokes believes the strip favoured India more, enabling them to capitalise and seal the historic win at Edgbaston - a forbidden place for visitors.

The historic match witnessed a staggering 1692 runs scored, yet the England captain outlined that the pitch's changing dynamics were a decisive factor in the result of the game.

“To be honest, it’s probably ended up being more of a subcontinent pitch as it got deeper and deeper into the game. There was certainly a little bit in it to start off with and I think we exposed that very very well early on,” Stokes told BBC Test Match Special.

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Stokes also conceded that India well and truly turned the tables on his team in every department of the game, with pacer Akash Deep's "incredible" skill-set making the decisive difference.

Playing his first game of the series, Akash Deep picked up a match haul of 10 wickets to fashion a famous 336-run win for India, who had never won on this ground prior to Sunday. The five-match showdown is now locked 1-1 with the third Test at Lord's from July 10.

"I thought Akash exposed that crack last night and this morning. His ability to use and change his angles consistently and still be so accurate. He was zoning in on that crack. That one Harry Brook got this morning you can't do anything about that," Stokes said in the post-match press conference.

Resuming the day at 72 for three, England could only bat 52.1 overs on day five in the improbable chase of 608. The Stokes-led side doesn't believe in draws, but the captain said in as many words the target was out of reach.

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"...300 and something is obviously a big margin (for the defeat). We knew what task we had ahead of us when we first went out to bat. That changed when you lose three wickets last night and lose two early wickets," he said.

He then pointed towards two situations from where England lost the match, as they conceded a huge 180-run lead to India and allowed their batters, including skipper Shubman Gill, to make gigantic. 

"The task today was batting out the 80 overs. The result we always try to push towards, and look for, was beyond...for us as a batting unit, to go out and bat the 80 overs was to go and play the way we play and focus on the fact that we knew we had to bat 80 overs."

"...India pushed to get 600 for some obvious reasons," he said, referring to India's delayed declaration on day four.