Bengaluru Test: Face-off gets heated, funny

Subhash Rajta

Tribune News Service

Bengaluru, March 5

It’s happening. The sparks are flying. The heat of the battle is getting to the players, and they are beginning to have a go at each other. On Sunday, the two skippers, Virat Kohli and Steve Smith, despite their professed respect and admiration for each other, kept tearing into each other for as long as Smith was on the field.

The Indians, right from the morning, had appeared in an aggressive mood. First, in an indication of things to come, Ravichandran Ashwin needlessly hurled the ball back to the wicketkeeper, and David Warner had to duck to avoid being hit. Things got nastier when Ashwin bumped into Matt Renshaw and then pushed him while trying to get to the ball and prevent Smith from taking a single. The enraged Ashwin and Kohli gave the young Renshaw an earful, prompting Smith to jump in. “There was a bit of talk but I think that’s because they were trying to unnerve each other, and get under each other’s skin. But it’s all good fun, good contest out there,” said a smiling Renshaw.

The tension in the middle turned a little comical when Ishant Sharma, in his follow through, started making weird faces while mocking Smith — Smith and Renshaw reacted by making faces at Ishant. Smith did get a little edgy, but Renshaw remained completely unfazed. “I don’t try and say too much out there, I just try and smile because in my past experience smiling seems to unnerve the bowlers a bit more than talking back, so I was just trying and enjoy it, and have fun,” he said. “A bit of stuff they said to me was actually quite funny. He (Virat) said that I might need to run off and go to the toilet again, which happened in Pune. It was quite funny.”

If it was a ploy by India to unsettle the batsmen, it apparently did work against Smith. But, to his immense credit, Renshaw handled it as well as he handled the Indian bowlers.

Ishant Sharma s Acting is better than his bowling ...

— Ahmed Khokhar (@axmedkhokhar)

Nothing new: Pujara

Cheteshwar Pujara, however, didn’t think much about it all. “When we play the Australian team, there is always some sledging involved... They were exchanging some words, but it was in the spirit of the game. There was nothing personal,” he said.