Cricket in the era of the coronavirus pandemic has given birth to some unusual trends all over the world. Things like not allowing spectators in the stadium and adding fake crowd noise are among the ones that impact the ambiance of an international game the most.

However, there is yet another rule that the International Cricket Council had established last year to prevent the spread of the highly contagious virus among the players and that was banning the use of spit to shine the ball.

How lovely. Cricket is returning to a quieter, less yobbish style of conduct. Apart from rubbing sweat instead of spit into the ball 🤢 #r4today

— Andrew Booton 🇬🇧 (@AndrewBooton) July 8, 2020

Instead the players were asked to use their sweat for similar purposes.

Indian cricketer Mayank Agarwal, however has this usual habit of going to his fellow teammates and borrowing their sweat whenever he feels the need.

On Day 2 of the first Test of the India-England series, Agarwal was seen rubbing the ball on Washington Sundar’s face with the hopes of getting all the sweat he wanted as the 21-year-old allrounder looked away with a face full of embarrassment.

The official Twitter handle of the BCCI even shared the picture with the fans.

Every drop of your sweat counts. #TeamIndia #INDvENG pic.twitter.com/GBe7jcMQwP

— BCCI (@BCCI) February 6, 2021

“Every drop of your sweat counts. #TeamIndia #INDvENG,” BCCI wrote.

The fans couldn’t help but marvel at what the players have to do at the time of the pandemic:

Cricket these days , you need to ask your team mates around for sweat

— kiran Reddy (@Cricket_traderz) February 6, 2021

All in the rules 🤣🤣

— 𝕾𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖐𝖆𝖓𝖙 𝕸𝖎𝖙𝖆𝖐𝖆𝖗𝖎 (@ShriMITAKARI) February 6, 2021

Am I the only one who finds this meme-able? https://t.co/eeNEvYfpsC

— Ananya Khanna (@a_khanzzzz) February 6, 2021

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time Agarwal has asked a fellow teammate to give up their sweat. During the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, it was Shardul Thakur who had to go through what Sundar did on Saturday.

Modern-day shining techniques

Live #AUSvIND: https://t.co/IzttOVL3j4 pic.twitter.com/enApdJ7MTW

— cricket.com.au (@cricketcomau) January 18, 2021

During the final match of the series at the Brisbane Cricket Ground, Agarwal was seen running to Thakur and rubbing the ball on his sweaty arm before rubbing it on his trousers to remove the dirt and bring back the shine for the ball to swing more.

However, many of the Australian fans considered this incident as going against the rules and started calling it “India’s sandpaper incident” which obviously was not the case. 

Cheating if that were Australia obviously.

— Pickles (@swollenpickles) January 18, 2021

How about this? pic.twitter.com/NJ2IeSHZch

— 🅺🅳🆁 (@KDRtweets) January 18, 2021

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