England suffer friction burns as contest gets heated

England's tour of India has provided richly competitive cricket, during the course of which a few additional contests have emerged.

On the first day, Ben Stokes exchanged words with Virat Kohli following his first-innings dismissal, and later in the day the ICC reprimanded him. On the second day, Stokes had Kohli caught behind and celebrated by putting his hand over his mouth in a pointed gesture.

"You know, there's been a bit of friction between the two," Adil Rashid said when asked about the incident in the post-match press conference.

On the third day, when Stokes was ruled lbw by DRS, Kohli responded with a pointed gesture of his own, as he began waving his arms to try and catch the attention of someone at the Pavilion End, and then put his finger on his lips.

"It's up to him, isn't it?" Jonny Bairstow said when asked what he thought of the Indian captain's celebrations. "He's obviously quite a vocal character. But that's Virat. He gets a bit wound up. We'll leave him to it. If he wants to do that, let him do that. And we'll go about our business as we have over a period of time. But yes. If he wants to do that and let the crowd do that, then let him."

Joe Root and R Ashwin have had a running battle as well. Root has been standing very straight at the non-striker's end - presumably to help with DRS calls - but it has also meant that Ashwin cannot get across to field the ball when it is defended into the leg side. Once it hit Root's bat and went to mid-on.

Ashwin complained to umpire Chris Gaffaney about Root's positioning, but nothing could be done because non-striking batsman are well within their right to stand wherever they want. Root seemed well aware of this fact - after he had been given licence to carry on, he was caught by the camera winking and smiling.

"I don't think there's anything in that, to be honest with you," Bairstow said. "The standing straight is standing straight. You can stand anywhere you want. I don't think there's a set thing to stand there at the moment. It is not a set play to try to unsettle anyone or anything like that. It's just that we fancy standing a bit straight."

There has been a difference of opinion in terms of tactics as well. Cheteshwar Pujara said England were negative in the second session on the second day when their fast bowlers were bowling outside off stump, generating reverse swing and keeping the runs down. Ravindra Jadeja echoed the same comments on Monday. "They were bowling very boring lines, outside off, outside off, outside off."

But Bairstow had a counter: "At some point you've got to control the rate, haven't you? At the same time we got wickets from bowling that. So are you going to bowl to someone's strength or are you going to bowl to someone's weakness? Two different options to take. Someone's very strong straight, you don't bowl straight, someone's very strong with the short ball, you don't bowl short to them. Different options to take. Different phases of play you go through. That was just a phase in play and something I thought worked really well."

One final potential flashpoint was the appeal against Murali Vijay for obstructing the field when James Anderson fielded a defensive push off his own bowling and aimed a shy at the stumps. The same sequence happened later in the innings with Jadeja at the crease, only this time without the appeal. Neither Vijay nor Jadeja moved deliberately to block the path of the throw so neither were in any danger of dismissal.