Mohammed Siraj (Getty Images)
MANCHESTER: Mohammed Siraj was in the zone a few minutes into the nets session. The practice pitches had a fair amount of juice and offered enough seam movement to excite the pacer. The ball jagged around and troubled the batters. Siraj went up to his run-up and screamed to Shubman Gill, the batter: “Welcome to Manchester, man!” Rishabh Pant, waiting for his turn to bat in the same net, interjected and said, “You should say, welcome to England.” Siraj even did his customary celebration once he found Gill’s outside edge. It is this tendency to keep coming hard at his opponents that fuels Siraj, as seen over the course of the series. The interaction was a reminder of the heated exchanges between the two teams in the previous Test at Lord’s.
Neither India nor England are going to take backward step in the fourth Test. Harry Brook, on his part, said England had only been responding to India’s aggression on the fourth evening of the Lord’s Test, which saw many verbal volleys between the two teams. “We saw them going hard at Zak (Crawley) and (Ben) Duckett. We had a little chat and thought we may as well get together and go back again,” Brook said on Monday. Brook suggested the exchanges had fired up England.
“I think it put them under a little bit more pressure, chasing a low score on a tough pitch. Thankfully, they ended up crumbling and we won the game,” Brook said. One couldn’t have expected a diplomatic response from Siraj. “We don’t plan as such (to be aggressive towards opponents). But when someone like Joe Root gets desperate and you beat him several times, you need to try and get him distracted. When I said, ‘Where’s your Bazball’, it just came up because of the heat generated at that moment,” Siraj said, before declaring with a smile, “You will see more of it in the series.” Whenever two teams clash and words are exchanged, conservative fans of the game are unsettled.
Brook, however, said, “We got a lot of compliments. Everybody said that it was awesome to watch. It looked like there were 11 versus two out there when we’re fielding. And it was good fun. It was tiring, but good. It made fielding a lot more enjoyable.” This has been a gruelling series but thankfully, neither camp has accused the other of crossing the line. There is even mutual admiration between the team members.
Brook, Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope and Root consoling a distraught Siraj and Ravindra Jadeja at Lord’s was an example. On Monday, Siraj responded by acknowledging Stokes’ beastlike effort on the last day of the last Test. “We were inspired by Stokes bowling two 10-over spells on the last day. We also appreciate when the opposition does well and look at the things we can learn from them,” he said. The jury will be forever out on this debate but it appears the players themselves see these exchanges as an added element of drama in the game, just like Brook saying, tongue in cheek, “India set us a ridiculously high total at Edgbaston because they were scared we could chase down any target which is remotely chaseable.”
