Ugly Aussies at it again as India dig in for draw
THE behaviour of Australia’s cricketers came under the spotlight once more after India launched an astonishing rearguard to save the third Test at Sydney. Captain Tim Paine, who was handed the task of restoring credibility after the Sandpapergate fiasco at Cape Town in 2018, was heard calling India’s Ravichandran Ashwin a ‘d***head’, after star batsman Steve Smith scraped over the batting guard of Rishabh Pant with his boot.
Matthew Wade feigned to lunge at Ashwin from his position at short leg, before pretending to collapse to the ground — an apparent reference to the various injuries India have collected during this Test.
Undeterred, the tourists finished on 334 for five from 131 overs, having lost only three wickets on a bad-tempered final day. With the series all square at 1-1, India will retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy if they avoid defeat in the fourth and final Test at Brisbane’s Gabba, starting on Friday.
But the heroics of Cheteshwar Pujara (77 from 205 balls), Pant (97 from 118), Hanuma Vihari (23 not out from 161), and Ashwin (39 not out from 128) were partly overshadowed by the Australians’ behaviour towards the end of a game already marred by Indian complaints of racial abuse from spectators.
Two days earlier, Paine lost 15 per cent of his match fee for swearing at u umpire Paul Wilson over a disagreement m about the DRS. Now, frustrated t by India’s resistance, as well a as some time-wasting, he got stuck in into Ashwin, telling him: ‘I can’t wait t to get you to the Gabba, Ash.’
No shrinking violet himself, Ashwin re replied: ‘I can’t wait to get you to In India. It’ll be your last series.’
Paine retorted: ‘At least my teammates like me, d***head. I’ve got a lot more Indian friends than you do. Even your team-mates think you’re a goose. Don’t they. Every one.’
Soon after, he asked Ashwin: ‘How many IPL teams wanted you when you asked every single one of them to have you?’
In what Australian media outlets reported as a ‘mocking accent’, Paine added: ‘I’ll come if I’m captain.’ He later admitted he had ‘ set a pretty poor example with my use of language’.
In isolation, some of the incidents on the fifth day at the SCG might have been easily glossed over. But Australian cricket has placed so much emphasis on cleaning up its image after Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were all banned because of the sandpaper plot that they now have little room for manoeuvre.
It was especially odd, then, that Smith should rake his studs over Pant’s guard during one break in play, in full view of the stump camera. The gesture hardly seemed worth it: Pant simply took fresh guard, while Smith’s errant boot went viral on Twitter after being highlighted by former Indian Test opener Virender Sehwag.
Paine’s sledging looked even dafter moments later when he dropped Vihari off Mitchell Starc –— one of three chances he put down on a day he described as ‘one of my worst on the cricket field’.
So far, anyway. Paine is already the only Australian captain to lose a home series against India. That was two winters ago, when he had the excuse of being without the exiled Smith and Warner. Now, with his opponents depleted by absences and injuries, he could double the tally.
As Ajinkya Rahane, captain in place of Virat Kohli — whose Bollywood wife Anushka Sharma yesterday gave birth to a girl — put it after escaping with a draw: ‘This is as good as winning a Test match.’
For many reasons, the world will be watching closely at Brisbane.