In the ending stage of Day three's third Test at Lord's, India players lost their cool on England opener Zak Crawley, who was seen deliberately wasting time. The incident has divided the internet, with many supporting Shubman Gill & Co. Former India player Farokh Engineer certainly did not like what he saw at Lord's. The expert, was at the stadium watching the match, came hard at England and called out Zak Crawley's time-wasting tactics as cheating.
With England bowling out the visitors for 387 runs, the hosts' openers strode out in the middle with only six minutes left in Day Three's play. However, what unfolded in the next few minutes was nothing short of cinema. The lanky opener pulled away from stance twice and later also called physio after a ball hit his glove.
India skipper Shubman Gill clearly did not like what Zak Crawley did and exchanged a few animated words with the opener and Ben Duckett. Engineer also did not like what he saw and expressed his two cents in a chat with RevSportz.
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“English people will call it professionalism, but I would call it cheating. That was a time-wasting tactic. They did not want to face one another over, which was very obvious. He could have been discrete about it but he made it look so obvious. That wasn’t very fair. But who knows? I don’t think our batsmen would have done such a blatant thing. The headline is it’s not cricket,” said Engineer.
Engineer calls Bazeball toothless after Crawley's actions
The former wicketkeeper-batter, who has played a lot of County cricket for Lancashire and knows English cricket inside out, took a dig at the hosts' Bazball approach, saying it does not work against top teams.
“This Bazball is all bundlebaz,” he said. “They can do Bazball against Bangladesh or Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Against India, they cannot do that, and I have always said that in the past. I wish they had adopted Bazball, we would have won the series by now.”
The expert feels India is slightly ahead after the end of Day three's play. With the visitors finishing with 387 runs, the hosts batter will have to play aggressively to set a challenging fourth innings target.
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“It’s even Stevens at the moment. If we had got a couple of wickets by the close of play today, I would have put ourselves as firm favorites. Bumrah has still got a new ball in his hand. Akash Deep has yet to bowl. Let’s first take 3-4 wickets before lunch on Day 4, and we are very capable of doing that”
