After losing the first T20I to India by 8 wickets at Old Trafford, English paceman David Willey has accused the Indian bowlers of not playing in the spirit of the game. He raised his fingers following the instances where the Indian bowlers repeatedly pulled out of their delivery strides during the game.
It was witnessed during the match that the Indian bowlers including Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Kuldeep Yadav aborted their run-ups on several occasions. Willey, who was miffed with those incidents, raised a question on their tactics.
While interacting with the media personnel, Willey said, “I'm guessing, but I think he [Bhuvneshwar] was looking to see what I was going to do.”
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“The spinners did it a couple of times. I'm not sure what the rules are on that. I don't particularly like it. I don't think it is necessarily in the spirit of cricket,” added Willey.
Speaking on the relevance of this tactic, Willey said, “It's not my job to comment on that too much on what they should or shouldn't be doing. Personally, I don't think I'd do that. I don't think it is great.”
On the other hand, Indian batsman KL Rahul has justified what the Indian bowlers did during the first face-off. He stated that the margin for error for bowlers in T20 cricket is very little so whatever tactics they can come up with and whatever they try to do to upset the batsmen is only fair.
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Willey witnessed it during the last over of the game when Bhuvneshwar pulled out his delivery stride right before releasing the ball. Willey scored an unbeaten 29 off 15 balls and picked up a wicket while bowling against India in the second innings.