Mohammed Siraj says Ben Stokes was swearing at him, Virat Kohli ‘handled’ the situation

The ongoing Test series between India and England has been a fiery affair since its onset and the opening day of the fourth Test, hosted at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, on Thursday was no different.

Indian skipper Virat Kohli and English all-rounder Ben Stokes were involved in an on-field spat, with umpires needing to intervene to separate the two.

The incident happened after paceman Mohammed Siraj dismissed English skipper Joe Root and welcomed Stokes to the middle with a bouncer. Stokes was not pleased with the delivery and allegedly said some unpleasant words to the 26-year-old pacer, following which Kohli engaged the Englishman in a war of words. 

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“He (Ben Stokes) was swearing at me, so I told Virat bhai about it and he handled that well,” Siraj said in his post-match interview. 

Watch the incident here:

Meanwhile, Stokes played down the incident in his post-match interview, saying “Pretty animated was that (the conversation)?…look at it from a different way, you know, two-three guys who care about what they are doing, care about representing and played against each other and you know, why would they not be competitive?” 

“So we are not going to back down to anyone…for me that is what it was competitive guys trying to get over each other,” he added. 

Siraj was impressive in his second match of the ongoing series as he took the key wickets of Root and Jonny Bairstow, with spinners Axar Patel (4/68), Ravichandran Ashwin (3/47) and Washington Sundar (1/14) accounting for the rest. 

Stokes top-scored for the visitors with a gritty 55-run knock as England were bundled out for 205.