India batting coach Sitanshu Kotak played down the early incident on Day 1 of the Colombo Test, where Yashasvi Jaiswal and Asitha Fernando had a fiery exchange of words. The incident occured after Fernando had cleaned up Jaiswal in an over where the batter had hit three fours. Jaiswal began to walk off when Fernando was celebrating with his teammates and the pacer seemed to have given the Indian opener a send-off.

Words, whatever they were, triggered Jaiswal and he turned around and walked towards the bowler to confront him. There was nearly a clash of heads before the other Sri Lankan fielders diffused the situation and sent Jaiswal on his way. Kotak believed it was a "heat of the moment" incident but also felt Jaiswal shouldn't have gone so close to the bowler in retaliation.

"I think the bowler commented something and it happened in the heat of moment. Obviously Jaiswal shouldn’t have gone so close to him but it happened in the heat of the moment," Sitanshu Kotak said.

Sri Lanka's fast bowling coach Ryan van Niekerk too struck a similar note. He felt it was part of a hard day's game and put it down to an "overflow of emotions" in the end.

"Look it is hard Test cricket, isn't it?When you're coming up against a team like India, you can't sit on the back foot and just bowl at them. I think from our side, it's bringing the challenge all the time, trying to make sure we can create something," Ryan van Niekerk said.

"And so, from my point of view, I've really asked the bowlers to stand up and create something. The verbals are probably an overflow of emotion. I'll leave that to the match referee to deal with," he added.

ICC match referee Andy Pycroft might not view the incident as lightly as the coaches. ICC have a punishment for send-offs and if the video evidence points to inappropriate physical contact between the two, there will be sanctions.