On the evening of Day 3, tempers rose when Zack Crawley tried to run down the clock in the third India vs England Test. Shubman Gill, usually a calm one on the field, was seen furious at Crawley’s tactics and had a heated exchange with him. The behavior of Gill on this occasion was compared to former Indian skipper Virat Kohli.
“It’s fine, I think he was just trying to be competitive and try to fight, very similar to Virat Kohli, I think it’s fine. But what you have done is that you brought out the best of England, the fight, and the beast England can be. I think that’s the different side of England that the players showed. It’s great for the series, I don’t know why he gets criticised,” Moeen Ali said, speaking on FanCode. Kohli, during his tenure as Indian skipper, was known for his aggression on the field and encouraging his team to play with a similar intention.
After the exchanges on Day 3, the tensions would also boil over to the next day as Mohammed Siraj sent back Duckett on Day 4. Siraj proceeded to roar right in Duckett’s face, his eyes bulging out of their sockets and veins popping. There was even a light shoulder contact. Duckett didn’t seem to really look at the bowler at any point while Siraj did the opposite for him. The Indian pacer even got a little talking-to from the umpires after the whole exercise.
Start of the fifth day with most of the animosity concentrated in the early exchanges, in which Jofra Archer dismissed Rishabh Pant and Washington Sundar in a devastating early spell. Archer had donned the role of the pantomime villain in that period. He made sure to give send-offs to both the players that he dismissed. Even after he was taken off the attack, Archer remained in the batsmen’s faces, having some words with Nitish Kumar Reddy, notably. Brook could also be heard telling Reddy from the slips that he is no longer playing in the IPL.
Reddy also had a few words with Stokes but arguably the biggest flare-up was between Brydon Carse and Ravindra Jadeja about four overs before Lunch. Jadeja ran right into Carse while running the first of the two runs the batters ran off the last ball of that over. Stokes came in between to break the two players up. Both players seemed to be telling each other that they didn’t do it on purpose and to be fair to them, they did look like they were blissfully unaware of each other before colliding in the replay of the incident.
