Former skipper Michael Vaughan has come out in the defence of a couple of England players facing the allegations of ball-tampering during the fourth day’s play in the ongoing second Test against India at Lord’s.
In a slow-motion video doing rounds on social media, one England player can be seen passing the ball to another, who appeared to have stamped his spikes on the red cherry, raising a social media storm.
However, Vaughan didn’t find it deliberate and he felt it was a case of a still shot being made "a damn sight worse" by netizens.
"You know what? I didn't even see it. I didn't even notice that someone had trodded on the ball. Sometimes, a still picture can make things look a damn sight worse. I'd also say if England did try to do it, it didn't work because the ball didn't move an inch, they aren't very good at it. I don't think there was anything like that, I went to see the coverage afterwards to make sure I was studying to see if England had tried to really screw with the ball, I didn't they had but obviously a still shot picture and then it goes and escalates across the media, never looks great," Vaughan said in an interaction with Cricbuzz on Monday (August 16).
"The batting coach of India (Vikram Rathour) came out and said India didn't have any issues with it. That's why social media can be a little bit precarious, it can make a picture look a bit worse than actually what happened in that given moment," he added.
Earlier, Indian batting coach Vikram Rathour had also said that it was "not deliberate" from the English cricketers.
"We saw it much later but I don't think it was deliberate," Rathour said at the press conference after the end of Day 4.
It is pertinent to note here that the Indian team hasn't lodged an official complaint with match referee Chris Broad and the matter hasn't escalated so far.
India's former opening pair Virender Sehwag and Aakash Chopra were the first to raise doubts over "ball-tampering" through their tweets.
