Joe Root has been hailed as "ingenious" by the legendary David Gower for coming up with a unique way to shine the ball during the first Test between England and Pakistan in Rawalpindi.
Root was seen shining the ball on spinner Jack Leach's bald head, with Gower, Nasser Hussain and Urooj Mumtaz laughing at Root's actions in the commentary box. "It's ingenious, absolutely ingenious because you're no longer allowed to use saliva [to shine the ball]," Gower said.
"Tests have apparently proven that sweat is much more effective at shining a ball than saliva. But I've never actually thought of using that particular [method] as a way of sourcing the shine!"
And fans on social media also found the moment hilarious, with one joking: "I liked the way leach was not surprised & co-operated well, just like everything was discussed in team meetings before.Lmao"
"I absolutely love cricket sometimes," added a second. While a third joked: "this is the single greatest thing to happen to test match cricket".
Former England striker and BBC Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker, meanwhile, could not resist aiming a dig at his colleague Alan Shearer, simply tweeting: "Always wondered why @alanshearer didn't play cricket"
England toiled hard in the field on an incredibly flat Rawalpindi pitch that has been called "embarrassing" by PCB chairman Ramiz Raja. They took three important wickets in the morning, before going an entire session without making a breakthrough as Babar Azam scored a superb century.
However, they then took four crucial late wickets in the final session to leave Pakistan 499-7 and trailing England by 158 runs with two days of play left. And England are confident they can take the remaining 13 wickets and force a win, with Joe Root saying: "We had to be creative throughout the day and we got our rewards at the end.
"If you feel like you have no chance then you make it extremely hard. But we stuck together, tried to make it fun and interesting and get them to think outside the box. As far as they are behind it still gives us a real opportunity to go and win this Test match.
"You know with our team and the way we play our cricket that we will be making sure we give ourselves a chance of winning the game. We aren't interested in drawing, we want to give us the best chance of winning and if Pakistan are good enough to beat us then so be it."
