If Prasidh Krishna is to be believed, Joe Root lost it over words that were not particularly offensive.
Fifteen wickets, over 340 runs, rain and sunshine, provocation and anger and very public displays of petulance -- the 75 overs of cricket on Day 2 of The Oval Test seemed to contain more thrills than the previous four Tests combined.
Hundreds upon hundreds of runs on flat tracks in this series so far, and then it took the green top at The Oval to finally produce the best day of the Indian summer, on the fifth and last Friday of the Test series.
With the series on the line, the players became provocateurs and the provoked, none more surprisingly than Joe Root.
Root, genial and unflappable, is more Tendulkar than Ponting in his placid manner, but on Friday he was provoked into a burst of anger accompanied by, Indian pacer Prasidh Krishna said, 'a lot abuse'.
Root, the second-highest run-scorer in Test cricket after Sachin Tendulkar, doesn't chase controversy -- the wildest scandal of his career had him being punched by Australia's David Warner at a bar in Birmingham in 2013. Root's response was non-violent -- he quietly accepted the apology Warner sent him in a text message.
He's 12 years older and, presumably, wiser, but on Friday Root let himself be drawn into an ugly -- but entertaining -- shouting match with Krishna, after Krishna made a comment about Root's 'great shape'.
Krishna, who picked up four wickets, said his intention was to indeed provoke Root -- to rattle him, to make him lose his focus and play a false stroke. If Krishna is to be believed, Root lost it over words that were not particularly offensive.
"I don't know why Rooty (reacted)," Krishna said, after the close of play.
He claimed he had only complimented Root.
"I just said, 'You're looking in great shape', and then it turned into a lot of abuse and all of that," Krishna said.
"That was the plan, but I didn't expect the couple of words I said to get such a big reaction from him," Krishna said, at the media briefing.
"But I love the guy that he is," Krishna, whose idea of bromance is to tease and distract the fellow he admires. "He is a legend of the game..."
The bust-up between the two nearly caused an incident -- K L Rahul joined in the verbals, and Umpire Kumar Dharmsena didn't like it. The exchange between the two was juvenile, Dharmsena, the stern teacher, chiding the schoolboy Rahul, telling him that 'We will discuss at the end of the match.'
Even more juvenile was the exchange between Ben Duckett and Akash Deep; stump microphones caught Duckett telling Akash Deep: 'You can't get me out!'
Later, Akash Deep did get him out and then, weirdly, put his arm around the batsman's shoulders and spoke to him with a grin on his face -- a very ill-advised move on a batsman who's very upset on being dismissed in a tame manner.
Luckily, Duckett didn't react to a bowler invading his personal space during a moment of agony -- he suffered Akash Deep calmly, not shoving or pushing him away.
Indeed, Marcus Trescothick, the England assistant coach, said that he knows of people in county cricket who may have elbowed Akash Deep if they'd been subjected to a hug and genial, casual chitchat after being dismissed.
"I don't think I've ever seen a bowler do that after getting someone out," said Trescothick.
Trescothick said the series has been played in good spirit, but there have been several instances of public petulance or anger. These included India Coach Gautam Gambhir, who should have known better, telling The Oval pitch Curator Lee Fortis: 'You're nothing, you're just a groundsman, nothing beyond that!'
There were other instances of men turning schoolboys as they played mind. Shubman Gill accused England of abandoning the spirit of cricket with their time-wasting tactics at the Lord's Test; also at Lord's, Mohammed Siraj was fined for his aggressive send-off of Duckett.
Then, at Old Trafford in Manchester, England Captain Ben Stokes accused Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar of playing on in the final session on Day 5 only due to the lure of scoring centuries, even though the match was certainly going to be drawn. Stokes implied selfishness, though his comments seemed to stem from his bowlers' inability to dismiss the two.
With three days left in the series, there's all to play for, and we're likely to witness the best and worst of players raising their games, and behaving like petulant schoolboys, too.
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