India head coach Ravi Shastri was displeased with the stoppage of play on Day 2 of the third and final Test between India and Sri Lanka owing to the complaints of the Lankan players about air pollution and conveyed his displeasure to the match officials, the team's bowling coach Bharat Arun informed mediaperson's during the press conference after the end of day's play on Sunday.
"Ravi simply said to the officials, 'Get on with the game. You don't need to stop. Just take a decision and get on with the game,'" Arun revealed.
He further added that his team was completely unconcerned with the supposed poor quality of air as they were entirely focused on their goal.
"Virat batted for close to two days and he didn't need a mask. We were simply focused on what we had to do and what we wanted to achieve so other things didn't matter to us. Our job is to go out and play and get the best out of our team," the bowling coach added.
The 54-year old steered clear of attributing any ulterior motives to the Lankan teams for stopping play but did deem the stoppages in play as unfair for his team. "Definitely we felt that it was not fair on the Indian team that the game was stopped. The umpires and the match referee have a job to do and it's not up to the players to go and protest. They know what they are doing.
"The Sri Lankans probably wanted to stress on the issue of pollution. It could have broken the rhythm of our batsmen but at that point we have to move on, that's why Ravi also went onto the field and asked the umpires to get on with the game," the former Test cricketer added.
Arun, though, denied that the declaration by Virat Kohli was forced upon the team by the circumstances. "It wasn't really a forced declaration. We were looking for a total around 550 and we were almost there so we thought, we may as well declare."
Sri Lankan coach Nic Pothas though defended his team and emphasized safety of the players. "It's been well documented that Delhi has a high level of pollution and at one stage it got extremely high. Our seam bowlers, Suranga Lakmal and Lahiru Gamage, were struggling. The match referee was in our change room. Suranga was continuously vomiting, Dhananjaya (de Silva) was also vomiting, so it was tough. The job of the support staff is to make sure that the players are safe and that's all we tried to do," Pothas explained.
He also attributed the absence of any difficulty to the Sri Lankans while batting to improvement in the conditions.
"I think the pollution levels were over 400 earlier in the day and they came down to around 300 so I presume it was a little better. As to what happens tomorrow, it is entirely up to the match referee and the umpires."