While India lost the Lord’s Test match by 22 runs, the third Test between India and England also had some heated moments between the two teams. With England openers taking up their time, a fired-up Shubman Gill-led Indian team had a confrontation with the England openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett on the third day of the Test.
The next day saw Indian pacer Mohammad Siraj celebrating excessively after he dismissed Ben Ducket. Siraj was later fined 15 percent of his match fee for breaching Level 1 of the ICC Code of Conduct by the ICC. Former England captain Nasser Hussain has termed the fine as harsh and has called out the ICC for not seeing the game as a game of emotions.
“One of the highlights of the Test match, the way India went at Crawley. For a start, they are talking about time wasting. They (England openers) started 90 seconds later than they should have. They were very street-smart in the way they slowly walked down the stairs and pretending to get lost in the long room and got out in the middle and they were smart. And India rightly went at them, and that obviously fired everyone up,” Hussain told Sky Sports.
The incident happened in the sixth over of England innings when a fired-up Siraj dismissed Duckett with the England batsman being caught by Jasprit Bumrah at mid-on after a pull shot. An agitated Siraj would follow Duckett during his walk back to form the crease and made light contact too with the English batsman, as Duckett walked towards the dressing room. Post the match, former England skipper Michael Atherton had called out the incident, comparing it with Virat Kohli’s shoulder barge against Australian batsman Sam Konstas in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne last year.
Hussain, though, does not see the Siraj incident like the Kohli incident. “Then, (Mohammad) Siraj was fired up. I think he’s a better cricketer when he’s fired up. You’d love to have Siraj on the side. I didn’t think he should’ve been fined. He went close to the line, he was right in (Ben)Duckett’s face, he didn’t barge at Duckett. If anything, Duckett went in that direction to get off the pitch. It wasn’t a shoulder barge as it has been with Kohli, you mentioned at the end of the game the other day but it wasn’t. I think it’s a game of emotions, and you don’t need 22 robots. I love that tension,” Hussain added.
When asked about where the series was headed, Atherton was of the view that the confrontation would play out for the rest of the series, with two Tests to be played. Atherton also sees the players not forgetting what happened at Lord’s. “And that’s what happened, England kind of were fired up. That’s also going to now play out for the rest of the series, which is the beauty of a five Test series that it allows kind of sub plots and personal rivalries and animosities to develop. Although, there are seven or eight days off before the next Test. Nobody will be forgetting all of it. So all of that context will be coming in the next Test,” said Atherton.
