The India captain, Shubman Gill, has strongly criticised some of England\u2019s behaviour during their current Test series, describing it as not \u201cwhat I would think comes in the spirit of the game\u201d.<\/p>\n
On the eve of the fourth Test at Old Trafford Gill was asked if he regretted confronting the England batter Zak Crawley during the last match at Lord\u2019s, a moment that prompted England to decide, as Harry Brook put it on Monday<\/a>, \u201cto give them something back and not be the nice guys we have been in the last three or four years\u201d.<\/p>\n Gill\u2019s intervention came as England\u2019s openers tried \u2013 successfully as it turned out<\/a> \u2013 to restrict India to bowling a single over during a seven-minute period at the end of the third day, using delaying tactics that included spotting convenient movement behind the sightscreen, and calling on the physio after being hit by the ball.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people have been talking about this so let me clear the air for once and for all,\u201d Gill said. \u201cThe 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 teams [do] this, in that position we would have also liked to play less overs, but there is a manner to do it.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, if you get hit on your body the physios are allowed to come on and that is something that is fair, but 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, and just leading up to that event a lot of things that we thought should not have happened, they happened.<\/p>\n Zak Crawley calls for the physio after apparently being hit on the hand by a delivery from Jasprit Bumrah at the end of day three of the Lord\u2019s Test. Photograph: Matt Impey\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not something I\u2019m very proud of but there was a lead-up and a build-up to that. It didn\u2019t just come out of nowhere. We had no intention of doing that whatsoever, but 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben Stokes defended his team\u2019s behaviour, insisting: \u201cAt not one stage did we go over the line.\u201d He said his side would not seek to play this week in similarly antagonistic style but that they would respond in kind if they sense their opponents doing so.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to let any team feel like they can intimidate us in any way,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are not going to take a backward step and let any opposition try and be confrontational towards us and not try to give a bit back.\u201d<\/p>\n Stokes is equally disinclined to take a backward step in his ongoing battle with the International Cricket Council over its regulations on over rates. England have long felt the existing rules are unfair<\/a>, with the ICC refusing to amend them<\/a> at a board meeting this year, and their frustration is simmering again after they were fined 10% of their match fee and docked two World Test Championship points after the third Test.<\/p>\n \u201cI can understand it from an external point of view, I really do,\u201d Stokes said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot that goes on out on the field. You\u2019ve got fast bowlers bending their back consistently. Throughout the course of a game, the time of overs is going to come down. You\u2019ve just got tired bodies. We played for five days [at Lord\u2019s], 15 days of cricket [in this series].<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI honestly think there needs to be a real hard look at how it\u2019s structured. You can\u2019t have the same rules in Asia, where spin bowling is 70% of the overs, and in New Zealand, Australia, England, where it\u2019s going to be 70%, 80% seam, because a spinner\u2019s over takes less time than a seamer\u2019s over.<\/p>\n Ben Stokes goes to congratulate Shoaib Bashir on taking the final wicket to win the Lord\u2019s Test. Spinners bowled 6.5 overs in the innings. Photograph: Peter Cziborra\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n \u201cCommon sense would say you should look at changing how over rates are timed in different conditions. There are times when the game isn\u2019t on the line and you\u2019ll just throw the ball to a spinner to get your overs [in], but then you\u2019re playing an international game and just trying to get your over rate back. I don\u2019t think people want to come and watch that.\u201d<\/p>\n While England named their team on Monday India have not yet reciprocated, as they mull possible responses to Akash Deep, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Arshdeep Singh all being ruled out of the match \u2013 and in Reddy\u2019s case, the series \u2013 through injury. Their main quandary is whether to give the 24-year-old all-rounder Anshul Kamboj, called into the squad this week, an international debut. \u201cWe have seen him enough, the kind of skillset that he brings to the table is exactly what we want in this team and he\u2019s there because we believe he can win us the match,\u201d Gill said. \u201cThe belief we have within the squad [is] that any player who comes in the team can win matches for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Quick GuideFourth Test teamsShow<\/p>\n Emirates Old Trafford, Wednesday 23 July to Sunday 27 July 11am BST starts<\/p>\n England (confirmed): Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope, Joe Root, Harry Brook, Ben Stokes (c), Jamie Smith (wk), Liam Dawson, Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Jofra Archer<\/p>\n India (possible): Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (wk), Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Anshul Kamboj, Mohammed Siraj<\/p>\n Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The India captain, Shubman Gill, has strongly criticised some of England\u2019s behaviour during their current Test series, describing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-14021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}