Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sri Lanka quick Asitha Fernando have picked up ICC sanctions over a flare-up on day one of the second Test in Colombo. Fernando had just knocked over Jaiswal’s stumps after the batter took three boundaries off him in that over, and as the bowler reacted. Jaiswal spun round and got in close, with helmet brushing before team-mates stepped in to pull them apart.

India’s batting coach Sitanshu Kotak put it down to the heat of the moment, saying Fernando’s send-off drew the reaction, but Jaiswal shouldn’t have gone that close, and Sri Lanka pace coach Ryan van Niekerk shrugged it off as emotions boiling over from a side determined to take the game to India.

The match referee found both men in breach of the ICC’s rule against inappropriate physical contact, docking a quarter of each player’s match fee and adding a demerit point to their records, and since both accepted the call, there was no need for a hearing. The dust-up drew a public rebuke from former India batter Sanjay Manjrekar, who took to X to press the ICC and BCCI to get tougher, arguing that looking the other way on this kind of conduct teaches players it’s fine to repeat, and pointed to the earlier Vaibhav Sooryavanshi episode on India A’s Sri Lanka trip as the same pattern.

“Dear @icc & @bcci…Vaibhav for Ind A recently & now Jaiswal… if you keep letting them get away with such behaviour, you train them to repeat such behaviour. It’s not good for the sport & crucially their own future too,” Manjrekar wrote on X.