As if captains Ben Stokes, Shubman Gill and their men were not enough to spice things up in the ongoing India vs England Test series. Now we have the coaches and the alleged rude behaviour of the Surrey curator upping the spice quotient before the fifth and final Test at The Oval.
With the kind of things that have transpired on the field during the course of the previous four Tests, both in terms of quality of cricket and fiestiness, one really didn’t need another element to draw eyeballs, but, like it or not, we have one.
India head coach Gautam Gambhir and Surrey chief curator Lee Fortis were at loggerheads two days prior to the fifth Test. Social media was flooded with videos and images of the incident. So much so that almost all the questions in India’s pre-match press conference, attended by batting coach Sitanshu Kotak, were about the ugly fight. Fotis, too, was given a chance to share his side of the story, but the Englishman chose to play it down.
From what Kotak said, there were two main reasons behind Gambhir’s finger-wagging and shouting at Surrey chief curator Lee Fortis: 1) His directive to the Indian support staff trying to inspect the pitch to maintain a 2.5 metre distance and 2) the way allegedly shouted at one of India’s support staff members for keeping a cooling box near the main square.
“When we went to see the wicket … they sent someone to tell us to stay 2.5 metres away from the pitch, which was a little surprising,” Kotak told a press conference.
“It’s a cricket wicket, there’s a five-day test starting the day after, and we were wearing joggers. So it was a bit awkward. We all know that curators are a little over-protective … but at the end of the day it’s a cricket pitch, not an antique that you can’t touch.”
Another underlying cause, which was not mentioned directly by Kotak, was that a day before, Furtis apparently had no such instructions for the English camp. The host head coach, Brendon McCullum, and ECB director Rob Key roamed around the main square, had a good close look at the pitch and even shared a laugh with the curator.
But when the Indian team tried to do the same, wearing joggers and shoes without spikes, Fortis objected and passed on instructions that Gambhir perceived as rude and arrogant.
Surrey curator’s double standards?
The Surrey curator’s double standards were not limited to what transpired on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, he proved again that his rules only applied to the visiting Indian team by allowing England captain Ben Stokes and head coach McCullum to stand on the main pitch. England batters Joe Root and Ollie Pope, in fact, had a little shadow practice while standing on the main pitch, wearing what appeared to be shoes with rubber spikes.
Just like Gambhir’s video, visuals of England players standing on the main pitch at The Oval spread like wildfire on social media on the eve of the series finale.