The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Gambhir, Afridi caught in war of words

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Monday, Nov 12, 2007
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Gambhir, Afridi caught in war of words

Kanpur: After the relative lull in the first two matches, the third India-Pakistan ODI saw some sparks flying in the Green Park Stadium with Gautam Gambhir and Shahid Afridi being the protagonists.

It all started with a mid-pitch collision with both the players holding each other responsible for the run-in.

Gambhir straightdrove Shahid Afridi for a boundary after which the duo were seen engaged in a war of words.

As could be made out from reading their lips, expletives were exchanged between the batsman and the bowler. Gambhir took a single to change ends but there was no let up in the verbal duel.

In fact it got worse as a furious Gambhir headed straight to Afridi to give him a piece of his mind, resulting in an eyeball-to-eyeball encounter, which was eventually snapped by umpire Ian Gould’s intervention.

Gould took Gambhir aside and told him to control his emotion, while Afridi too was told to mind his business by the umpire at the end of the over.

Incidentally, Gambhir also had a brief altercation with Sohail Tanvir who made a gesture at the left-hander after a fluffed shot.

Playing it down

In the post-match press conference, both the captains, however, sought to play down the incident.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni said people should not read much into it and added, “I think people love to see little aggression of this kind in one day cricket, isn’t it?”

His counterpart Shoaib Malik too sought to put a lid on the incident.

“I think at times, aggression spills out. After the incident, I said sorry to Gambhir but these incidents do take place. There was nothing serious about it.” — PTI

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