Manchester [UK], July 22 : Ahead of the fourth Test match against England at Manchester's Old Trafford, Indian skipper Shubman Gill spoke on his and the team's heated confrontation with England openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett, saying that both batters were around one and the half minutes late to the ground with seven minutes of play left and the argument, while it is something he is "not proud of", did not come out of nowhere.
Heading to Manchester, the series is in England's favour 2-1. During the day third of the Lord's Test, which India lost by 22 runs, an extremely heated argument took place between skipper Gill and England openers, with the Indian skipper alleging that they had wasted time while arriving and after arriving at the crease, to face as less balls as possible, with day's play coming to close. During this whole confrontation, the whole team had surrounded the batters, trying to get under the skin of the batters in every way possible.
The episode fired up both teams, with pacer Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah showing aggression in their bowling and body language. This aggression reached its peak when, on the fifth day, a fired-up England reduced India to 82/7 in pursuit of 193 runs, with skipper Ben Stokes bowling a marathon spell of almost 10 overs and ever the returning Jofra Archer producing some absolute scorchers.
Speaking on the entire incident with Crawley and Duckett ahead of the pre-match presser, Gill said, "So let me just clear the air for once and for all. The English batsmen on that day, had seven minutes of play left. They were 90 seconds late to come to the crease. Not 10, not 20, 90 seconds late. Yes, most of the teams, they use this. Even if we were in a position, we would have also liked to play fewer overs. But there is a manner to do it."
"We felt, yes, if you get hit on your body (one of Jasprit Bumrah's deliveries hit Crawley's hands), the physios are allowed to come on. And that is fair. But to be able to come 90 seconds late on the crease is not something that I would think comes in the spirit of the game," he added.
"I would not say it was something that I am very proud of. But there was a lead-up and build-up to that. It did not just come out of nowhere. And we had no intention of doing that whatsoever. But it just, you are playing a game you are 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," he concluded.
The series is on the line for India, with the scoreline not in their favour. While the aggression and banter by Gill-led India was reminiscent of the Virat Kohli era and made up for great cricket viewing with a tinge of spice it added to the match, the team would be aiming to channelise the aggression in a much better way with both bat and ball to level the series.
India's updated squad for fourth Test: Shubman Gill (C), Rishabh Pant (VC & WK), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohd. Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Kuldeep Yadav, Anshul Kamboj.