The India vs England Test series has been a closely fought affair. Often the players have gotten aggressive. Be in Shubman Gill or the England players. In the final moments of the fourth Test, things went to another level as the Ben Stokes-led side offered a handshake to Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, meaning they were asking for a draw, despite both the Indian batters close to their individual centuries. Along with Ben Stokes, Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley were also quite vocal. Crawley went on to say that the incident was embarrassing. However, Jadeja and Sundar paid no heed and went on to score their respective centuries. The match ended in a draw.
Robin Uthappa was not at all amused with the turn of events.
“Having a conversation is absolutely fine, like, ‘Ok, mate we don’t have much time left to play. Can we go off?’ And then, ‘Look we have earned the right to score hundreds here. We think we deserve it.’ But the fact that the players went after after them. The likes of Duckett, Crawley for crying out loud mate, what are you doing? It was so unnecessary. A Test hundred is a Test hundred. Probably, only 1 or 2 percent of the cricket world has a Test hundred. It just felt weirdly familiar to us Indians, where we have been told what to do. We have been told what we should be thinking. what we should be doing What the heck man? You want to play your way, you play your way. It is within the rules of the game. You follow the rules, stay within line, we’re good,” he said on his YouTube channel on Wednesday.
“It’s like saying ‘you can’t eat non-vegetarian food because it doesn’t agree with our morals’. It’s exactly like that. If I am eating non-vegetarian food and you are having vegetarian food, how does it matter to you? We can happily co-exist,” he said.
Former India head coach Greg Chappell also didn’t hold back in his criticism of Stokes and his players, labelling their antics as “childish and shocking”.
“What should have been a celebration of Test cricket’s enduring drama ended in an ugly scene: England’s fielders aiming barbs and bouncers at India’s centurions-in-waiting,” Chappell wrote in his column for ESPNCricinfo.
“For a team that has traded on the breezy moralism of the Bazball era, the petulance was jarring. England, often quick to claim moral victories, inadvertently surrendered the high ground here. India, conversely, left Manchester buoyed not only by resilience but also by the visible cracks in the English facade,” he added.
