England veteran batter Joe Root believes India’s fast bowler Mohammed Siraj likes to get under the skin of the opposition batters to pump himself and give his team an advantage. Siraj is known to lure the opposition batters into a verbal battle and the same was on display on the recent tour of England.

The fast bowler ended the Anderson-Tendulkar series as the leading wicket-taker with 23 scalps in five Test matches at an average of 32.43. Siraj scalped nine wickets in the final Test match at the Kennington Oval and he was India’s hero on the final day, taking five wickets in the second innings. 

Joe Root said on the Barmy Army YouTube Channel, “I don’t know most of them really well but a lot of the stuff you see on the screen (sledging), it’s all for show. Someone like Siraj, it’s all his way of creating an atmosphere, whether it be from the crowd or from his team mates. Trying to create some form of pressure and theatre that might give them a small edge. That’s the art of the game and the best person that’s ever done it was Shane Warne.”

On the other hand, Root also opened up on his verbal spat with India’s lanky pacer Prasidh Krishna in the first innings of the fifth Test. Krishna said a few words to Root but the veteran batter reacted in an aggressive manner, which left the Indian pacer surprised.

“The first ball he hit me hard on the finger and I was trying not to show any sort of emotion about it. And then I hit him for a four the next ball or the ball after and he said something to me. I have no idea what he said. I just thought he was not going to expect me to go back at him. There was an element of still being in a reasonable amount of pain. I think the situation kind of required it as well, where we were in the game. It was quite a bowler friendly surface and it was overcast,” said Root.

Root scored 537 runs in five Test matches against India at an average of 67.12.