India captain Shubman Gill speaks during a press conference at Edgbaston, Birmingham, England, Tuesday July 1, 2025. AP/PTI(AP07_01_2025_000278A)
Manchester: Captain Shubman Gill on Tuesday accused the England team of not adhering to the spirit of the game when openers Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett came out to bat late on the fourth evening. “A lot of people have been talking about it. Let me just clear the air once and for all. The English batsmen on that day, they had seven minutes of play left. They were 90 seconds late to come to the crease. Not 10, not 20, 90 seconds late,” Gill said.“Most of the teams use such delaying tactics. Even if we were in that position, we would also have liked to play lesser overs, but there’s a way to do it. We felt if you get hit on your body, the physios are allowed to come in. 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,” Gill said. Things started to get ugly when Gill used cuss words after Crawley kept pulling away in the middle of Jasprit Bumrah’s run-up. The entire Indian team went hard at the openers.Gill, however, conceded he was not exactly proud of the way things transpired. He claimed that emotions got the better of him because the England batters were wasting time. “Leading up to that event, a lot of things happened that we thought should not have happened. I wouldn’t say it is something that I’m very proud of, but there was a build up to that. It didn’t just come out of nowhere. We had no intention of doing that whatsoever,” Gill offered as way of explanation.“You’re playing a game. You’re playing to win and there are a lot of emotions involved. There are things happening that should not happen. But sometimes the emotions come out of nowhere,” he added.
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The English camp has claimed that their aggression on the field on the final day was just a reciprocation of India’s outburst against their openers. “Obviously, it started off that night when Zak and Ben had to go out. We had the advantage of bowling last in the Test match to win. We just threw everything that we possibly could at India, not only with our skills, but also with our energy in the field as well,” England captain Ben Stokes said while addressing the media before Gill on Tuesday.“I guess it was a really nice moment as a team when you speak about something like that and everyone buys into that,” he added.Stokes has maintained that his team won’t go out to pick a fight with the opposition in the remainder of the series. “We’re (not) going to purposely go out and look to start (riling up the opponent) because then that will take our focus off what we actually need to do out in the middle. But by no means are we going to take a backward step and let any opposition try to be confrontational towards us. That goes for most teams. But the series has been great to play. It has been great to watch,” Stokes said.It will be interesting to see how England respond after Shubman Gill’s accusation.
