Played in the right spirit up until that point, the England-India first Test in Trent Bridge saw a moment suggestive of the contrary. The home team pacer Ollie Robinson, who was involved in a verbal altercation with KL Rahul, ended up barging shoulders with the well-set Indian batsman as he walked past him.
The incident happened after the second ball of the 50th over on Day 3 in Nottingham. As Rahul nudged the ball through the on-side and reached the other end to complete an easy single, Robinson threw some words at him while the batter also responded.
Just then, having reached near Rahul, the pacer was seen clashing shoulders with him as he walked back to his mark for the next delivery – a moment of physical wrangling, which is completely unacceptable on a cricket field.
Rahul didn’t let the matter escalate further by simply going ahead with his innings, even though the batsman would’ve been in the right to take the case forward to the two on-field umpires.
But while the play went ahead in Nottingham, fans didn’t take Robinson’s inappropriate behaviour lightly and had a lot to say over Twitter about the barging of shoulders.
Robinson had been dropped from the England side despite an impressive Test debut earlier in the summer when his 8-year-old tweets containing misogynist and racist remarks resurfaced over Twitter. The England and Wales Cricket Board pulled him up for disciplinary reasons.
Robinson was handed an eight-match ban, five of those suspended for two years, by an ECB commission before he was cleared to resume his international career ahead of this series.
