Intro:

India's Ravichandran Ashwin remains positive despite being bowled out for 152 by England after winning the toss on the first day of the fourth Test at Old Trafford.

Script:

SOUNDBITE (English) Ravichandran Ashwin, India all-rounder (on what should have been a par score on the Old Trafford wicket):

"You can't put a number on to something and say that's what it looked like. Definitely, from outside or whatever, it looked like it had something in it and the bowlers exploited it pretty well, so yeah, maybe we could have got a little bit more, you always want that little bit more in anything that you do, so I think we bowled pretty well to come back at the end, so if we can knock off a few (England wickets) tomorrow morning, it will be nice."

SOUNDBITE (English) Ravichandran Ashwin, India all-rounder (on remaining optimistic about India's position - bowled out for 152 and England 113 for three in reply):

"Well, there have been such situations before and when we play Ranji Trophy games, Bombay has been zero for five hundred and they've managed to win a Ranji Trophy from there so, pretty much that's where our... that's where my motivation came from, pretty disappointed that I threw it away at the end, could have been more runs, probably, and I have only myself to blame for that. If we had more runs we could probably have put more pressure on them. But still, if we get some (favourable) conditions tomorrow morning and if we get a couple of wickets away, we are in the game, right in the mix."

SOUNDBITE (English) Ravichandran Ashwin, India all-rounder (on MS Dhoni's innings of 71 and their partnership for the seventh wicket of 66):

"I thought he batted brilliantly. It was a very gutsy knock, the ball was going around, the ball was actually kicking off a length as well. When we got together, he asked me to play my game, he asked me to play the shots that I wanted to, so we pretty much decided that that was the way to go, because (there were) hardly any runs on the board and wickets were falling, we didn't want to be just sitting ducks, so I got on with my game, we kept rotating the strike, we were not giving many overs away in terms of maidens, so that was our plan and it went all right. He was very gutsy today."