India’s star batter KL Rahul explained the visitors’ perspective on the last controversy, which occurred on the third day at Lord’s. The hosts were supposed to play two overs after the Men in Blue were bundled out for 387 runs and both the teams had scored the same amount of runs. The Indian bowlers had planned to bowl two overs to the English openers and that’s when Zak Crawley decided to waste time.
This didn’t go down well with Shubman Gill, who was seen abusing Crawley. When the fifth ball was bowled, Crawley was hit on the gloves and he was thus seen getting treatment from the physio and that led to the Indian team mocking him with a riled-up Gill. During the post-match press conference, Rahul revealed that they just wanted to bowl two overs since that’s what they had planned in the six minutes remaining.
Rahul further revealed that they were already riled up as they were aware of how challenging it was for the batters to come in and bat after fielding the entire day.
“Yeah, I mean, I have seen him (Shubman Gill) fired up, but obviously, we wanted to bowl 2 overs. There were 6 minutes left. 2 overs is a no-brainer that any team will bowl. But, yeah, it’s a bit of theatrics at the end. And, yeah, we were all pumped up either way because we know how difficult it is for a batter to come into bat for 2 overs when you’ve been in the field all day. We’re hoping we could get a wicket there and a wicket at the end of the day’s play would have been perfect for us,” Rahul told reporters during the post-match press conference.
Rahul further revealed that they were anyways pumped up considering the situation of the match post three days and there was nothing to differentiate between the teams.
“I think even without that we would have been fired up anyways because that’s where the game stands, we have two days from now on with both the teams probably back to 0 after 3 days of hard-fought cricket. It all comes down to day 4 and day 5. So we would have been fired up anyway. So yeah, we will go out there and try and get 10 wickets as quickly as we can and enjoy ourselves in the field,” he concluded.
