Bizarre scenes were witnessed at the The Oval on Saturday when fast bowler Chris Woakes bowled four balls of off-spin due to bad light on day 2 of the third Test between England and Sri Lanka in London.
The umpires asked England captain Ollie Pope to bring on the spinners due to the fading light, which is a common practice in Test cricket. Woakes was already 2 balls into his over when he decided to bowl off-spin after the umpires had a discussion with Pope.
This happened right after Dimuth Karunaratne's run out in the 7th over of the Lankan innings. Forced to slow down, Woakes gave away 6 runs from his 4 balls including a boundary hit by Pathum Nissanka after Kusal Mendis took a single off the third delivery.
Root & Stokes give hilarious reactions
The incident left former England captain Joe Root in splits as he stood at first slip to Woakes. England's spin bowling coach Jeetan Patel also had an anxious look on his face when Woakes was bowling off-spin.
Regular captain Ben Stokes, who is out of the Test with an injury, was in shock when he saw Woakes bowling spin.
England posted 325 on the board thanks to skipper Pope's 154 off 156 balls while Ben Duckett also made a useful contribution of 86 runs but the rest all failed to fire for the home team with 19 being the next best score managed by Harry Brook.
Milan Rathnayake bagged 3 wickets while Vishwa Fernando, Lahiru Kumara and captain Dhananjaya de Silva took two each for the Lankans.
England lead the 3-match series 2-0.
