England’s veteran batter Joe Root has shed light on the heated verbal spat between Indian captain Shubman Gill and England opener Zak Crawley in the recent Anderson-Tendulkar series. On the third day of the third Test match at Lord’s, India had a chance to bowl two overs at the England openers – Crawley and Ben Duckett.

However, Crawley adopted time-wasting tactics in the first over, which was bowled by Jasprit Bumrah. The England opener called a physio when he was hit on the bottom hand by Bumrah and Gill was not impressed with the same. Gill had a heated argument with both England openers and things didn’t go well.

But Root recalled that Gill had called the physio for a 10-minute massage on the second day when he was suffering from cramps.

Root said on Barmy Army TV YouTube Channel, “It was quite amusing watching all that unfold, especially having seen Shubman getting a massage for ten minutes when he had cramps the day before. There are other things like these that happen during the game that adds to the spectacle.”

“It’s not something you want to see all the time, where days get played out over only 60 overs because there are so many other things happening. But every now and then, something like that is good theatre as long as it doesn’t ruin the overall experience.”

Root added that Gill lost his temper but at the same time, it created a lot of drama to the whole series.

“I guess there is just an element of that in the way they do things. And as an opposition, it’s just making sure you have a very good method in combating that, whether that’s having a go back at them, like the incident at Lord’s with Zak that made that over about eight minutes long. Gill lost his temper but it creates great drama to the whole thing,” said Root (via the aforementioned source).

Gill later revealed that Crawley and Duckett were 90 seconds late to the crease at the fag end of the day’s play.