India head coach Gautam Gambhir was involved in a verbal spat with Oval pitch curator Lee Fortis
During the course of all four Test matches in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, the mood on the pitch has been fiercely competitive, emotional and full of banter. While there were light-hearted moments like Ravindra Jadeja signalling Joe Root to run an easy second while on 98, there were many things said about ‘spirit of cricket.’ It started with the third day confrontation between Indian captain Shubman Gill and England opener Zak Crawley that spilled over to the fourth and fifth day.
Even when the match was over and England took a 2-1 lead, there was still something on. The fourth Test at Manchester ended in a controversial draw after a heated disagreement between England skipper Ben Stokes and Jadeja after the former asked to shake hands for a draw with two more hours of play left in the day.
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There was enough suspense about the playing XI combinations on both sides due to the injuries to Rishabh Pant, Ben Stokes, Nitish Kumar Reddy as well as the bowling workload of Jasprit Bumrah and Jofra Archer.
However, it was the on-field pre-game spat between The Oval pitch curator Lee Fortis and India head coach Gautam Gambhir, that started the smoke even before the playing XIs were discussed.
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While Fortis sidestepped questions from Indian media personnel on Tuesday, Indian team’s batting coach Sitanshu Kotak said that Gambhir had been told by Fortis to not step on the playing surface for the fifth Test even when they weren’t wearing any metal spikes, which led to the confrontation.
Still the discussion about the incident raged on as England’s players and coaches were photographed shadow batting and inspecting the pitch with their shoes on.
When asked about the issue, Shubman Gill felt that there was no point to Fortis’ instruction on inspecting the pitch as they are professionals and know how to analyse a surface without damaging it.
“As far as I remember we never had any instructions before about maintaining 2.5 m distance from the pitch.We have played four matches and no one gave us any instruction. I don’t know what the fuss was all about yesterday,” Gill told reporters ahead of the fifth Test beginning on Thursday.
Gill echoed Kotak’s sentiments, who had said that Gambhir is a professional with a lot of expertise and experience and shouldn’t have been instructed by a curator, even though they usually tend to be protective about the pitches they prepare.
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