Ex-India legends calls out England for ‘cheating’ tactics at Lord’s

In the last few minutes of Day 3 at Lord’s, players got angry and lost their cool, but former Indian wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer was not going to sugarcoat what he saw. The 87-year-old, who was at the famous Lord’s ground on Saturday, slammed England’s strategy, calling Zak Crawley’s time-wasting tricks “cheating” and taking a sharp jab at the much-hyped Bazball philosophy.

“It is not ‘cricket’”—Engineer tears into Crawley’s antics

With India having bowled England out for 387 and matching them run for run in their own innings, the hosts came out to bat in the final six minutes of the day. But what followed was less cricket and more theatre. Zak Crawley delayed taking strike, pulled away from his stance twice, and then called for the physio after a delivery hit his glove.

The drama didn’t sit well with Indian captain Shubman Gill, who exchanged heated words with Crawley and Ben Duckett. Nor did it impress Engineer. In a chat with RevSportz, the veteran cricketer didn’t mince his words.

“English people will call it professionalism but I would call it cheating. That was timewasting tactics. They did not want to face 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.

“This Bazball is all bundlebaz”

Engineer, who played county cricket for Lancashire and knows English cricket inside out, also took aim at England’s Bazball approach, suggesting it had no legs against top teams like India. “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.”

It was quite a funny thing for Engineer to say, who himself was fond of playing aggressive cricket. England, who have labelled them as trend-setters, played at a run rate of 3.44 in the first innings. In the entire Day 1, they made just 241, their lowest score in a day under the tutelage of Brendon McCullum.

While the third Test remains delicately poised, Engineer believes India still hold the edge. “It’s even stevens at the moment. If we had got a couple of wickets by close of play today, I would have put ourselves as firm favorites. Bumrah has still got a new ball in his hand. Akash Deep is yet to bowl. Let’s first take 3-4 wickets before lunch on Day 4, and we are very capable of doing that”