Andrew McDonald, the coach of Australia, has accused India of trying to scare Sam Konstas by celebrating Usman Khawaja’s wicket late on the first day at the SCG. In a dramatic conclusion to play, the umpire intervened after Konstas and Jasprit Bumrah got into a verbal altercation over Khawaja’s attempts to make it the final over.
After two deliveries, Khawaja stole the final delivery of the day, causing Bumrah to pivot and go aggressively in Konstas’ direction. Following the event, McDonald checked in with Konstas to make sure the 19-year-old was unfazed by India’s response to him.
“My conversation with him was around whether he’s okay. Clearly, the way India celebrated that was quite intimidating,” McDonald said.
“It’s clearly within the laws of the game, the rules and regulations. There’s been no charges laid, but to have an opposition swarm the non-striker like that, we’ve got a duty of care to our player to make sure he’s okay and in a headspace to go out there and perform.”
Pressed on whether he felt India had gone too far, McDonald added, “It’s clear that’s acceptable because there was no fines or punishments, so I’ll leave that up the ICC – Andy Pycroft being the match referee – and the umpires out there. If they thought it was satisfactory then I suppose that’s the benchmark we are playing towards.”
On the second morning, Konstas reached number 23 after driving Bumrah down with his feet and scooping him again to deep third before pushing Mohammed Siraj into the slips. When the wicket dropped, Bumrah, who was fielding at mid-on, seemed to move towards Konstas’ direction rather than immediately heading for the Indian huddle.
“We enjoy the way that he plays the game and we would also like to play the game aggressively,” Prasidh Krishna said after the second day’s play.
“If we have somebody that comes up and says I can fight you, as a team we want to tell them we are here and you can’t take us for granted. We are all here, 11 of us versus you. If you can be as aggressive, that’s fine.”
Virat Kohli shoulder-barged Konstas during his first innings of 60 off 65 balls on his debut at the MCG. Before kickoff on the second day in Sydney, Ricky Ponting expressed his disapproval of Konstas’s recent intrusion into the matter.
When he told Channel 7, “I didn’t like Konstas getting involved,” “He didn’t have to fight that battle. It was between Bumrah and Khawaja.
The young man there should have remained out of it and left his senior player try to manage the final few balls, so I hope that there was some conversation with someone from the Australian dressing room last night. Naturally, when you use the game, the game.
