To come 90 seconds late is not something I would think comes in the spirit of the game: Shubman Gill

India captain Shubman Gill has said that England acted against the “spirit of cricket” with their time-wasting tactics in the Lord’s Test. And that resulted in a number of arguments in the just concluded third Test match.

Basically, Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett ended up facing just a single over at the fag end of the third day after India were bowled out in their first innings. During the course of that over from Jasprit Bumrah, Crawley pulled out of his stance a few times. In between, he also took the help of the physio in order to treat his hand.  At that juncture, Gill and the rest of the Indian players started making animated gestures at the England openers. A verbal spat followed between the players of the two sides. 

 Ahead of the Old-Trafford Test, Gill told in the presser: “A lot of people have been talking about it, so let me clear the air once and for all. If we were in that position, we would also like to play less overs, but there’s a manner to do it,” he said. “To be able to come 90 seconds late to the crease is not something that I would think comes in the spirit of the game. The English batsmen on that day, they had seven minutes of play left. Not 10, not 20, they were 90 seconds late.”

He also added: “It didn’t just come out of nowhere. And we had no intention of doing that whatsoever. But you’re playing a game you’re playing to win. And there are a lot of emotions involved. And when you see there are things happening that should not happen, sometimes the emotions come out of nowhere.”

Incidentally, there were verbal altercations right through the next two days of the Test; a game that England went on to win by 22 runs. Mohammed Siraj, India pace bowler, was penalised for his celebrations after dislodging Duckett, while Brydon Carse and Ravindra Jadeja also clashed when the latter tried to take a run. In fact, the duo had to be separated by the umpires and Ben Stokes, the England skipper.