At the end of another day of backchat and occasionally fraying tempers, in which the former England captain Michael Vaughan suggested of the two sets of players that “it’s almost like they’ve had enough of each other”, India admitted Joe Root had been the target of a deliberate plan to wind him up and put him off his game.
Alastair Cook, another former England captain, had suggested as much after Root reacted to a comment from Prasidh Krishna. “He was angry, he wasn’t in much control, but why wouldn’t you try to upset Joe Root?” Cook said. “I don’t know if it was a plan but you can say that it did work. I just hope what he said was within the line. I hope it didn’t cross the line, and was good old honest sledging. It definitely got Joe out of his bubble.”
