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England batter Harry Brook has blamed the Indian team for the heated verbal spat that took place at Lord's in the third Test. India captain Shubman Gill and England's Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley were involved in on-field arguments between each other during the third day of the match.
Gill even accused Crawley of time-wasting after the batter had pulled out four times before facing a delivery from Jasprit Bumrah. Things only got worse when the next delivery of the over hit Crawley on the glove and he called in the physio to inspect. This led to the Indian team taunting the batter as much as they could.
England soon returned the favour to India
England didn't back down either and gave it all back to Gill & Co. when they came out to bat in the final innings to chase down the target of 193. Pacer Brydon Carse was involved in verbal spats with both Akash Deep and Ravindra Jadeja while captain Ben Stokes also did sarcastic claps towards the Indian batters. Eventually, the hosts would go on to bundle out the visitors for only 170 runs, winning the match by a 22-run margin and taking a 2-1 lead in the series.
Ahead of the fourth Test, Brook revealed that he had received a lot of compliments by people for their verbal spat with the Men in Blue and many even labelled the moments as 'awesome'. He added that it was quite a 'fun' experience for the England team to field following the spat.
“I’ve had a lot of compliments, everybody said that it was awesome to watch and it looked like there was 11 versus 2 out there and we’re fielding and it was good fun. It was good fun. It was tiring, but yeah, it was good. It made fielding a lot more enjoyable," Brook said in the pre-match press-conference.
However, Brook didn't stop there and went on to blame India for the heated arguments that took place between the two teams in the third Test. He further stated that the hosts played in the spirit of the game for the most part.
“Yeah, absolutely. And we’d try and play in the spirit of the game as much as possible. And like you said, them lads went hard and Creeps and Ducky on that night when they Bumrah bowled that single over. So we watched that and we reassessed and we thought it was the right time to go back at them," Brook stated.
Meanwhile, the fourth Test is set to commence from July 23 at Old Trafford. It will be quite an important match especially for the Men in Blue in the match as if they lose again, England will go on to seal the series. Any result other than a win in Manchester will see the visitors lose all their chances of triumphing the series.
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