PAINE DEFENDS ‘QUIRKY’ SMITH
But Aussie captain admits his own behaviour was poor
AUSTRaLia captain Tim Paine leapt to the defence of under-fire Steve Smith yesterday, claiming that he had not deliberately scuffed up the crease during the last day of the third Test against india.
Smith, who was banned and sacked as captain in 2018 for his role in Sandpapergate, was caught on stump camera astonishingly scraping at the crease with his foot during a drinks interval on the final day in Sydney. india batsman Rishabh Pant had to re-mark his guard when he returned to bat.
‘he was certainly not changing a guard,’ Paine insisted. ‘i imagine if he was, the india players would have kicked up a bit of a stink at the time. as we know, he has those many Steve Smith quirks — one of those is he is always marking centre (stump).
‘That is something he does every single game, five or six times per day. he likes to walk up to where he bats and visualise where he is going to play. You could see him playing a couple of shots as a left-hander as if it’s where he wanted nathan Lyon to pitch the ball. it’s one of his mannerisms.’
Last night, Smith repeated his skipper’s version of events. ‘it’s something i do to visualise where we are bowling,’ Smith told news corp. ‘and then out of habit i always mark centre. it’s such a shame that this and other events have taken away from a great batting performance by india.’
india batted out the final day to earn a draw, with the series now locked at 1-1 going into Friday’s final Test in Brisbane.
But Paine did apologise for sledging india’s Ravichandran ashwin. The wicketkeeper, who dropped three catches in the innings, called ashwin a ‘d***head’ and said he was unpopular with his team-mates. ‘i’m bitterly disappointed with the way i went about it,’ said Paine, who was also fined 15 per cent of his match fee for dissent to an umpire. ‘i felt my mood throughout the match was a little bit off, the way i spoke to the umpires on day two was also unacceptable.
‘i’ve got to cop that on the chin, it’s not the way i want to lead this team. i always talk to our players about playing this game on skill and not on emotion and yesterday i fell short of my own standards and expectations.
‘i’m human. i want to apologise for the mistakes i made. We’ve set really high standards over the last 18 months and yesterday was a bit of a blip on the radar. normally if i’m dropping catches, i look at the technical stuff and that was OK. So i think it was all around my mood, being a bit tense and not being focused on my no 1 job, which is to catch the ball.
‘i was distracted by other stuff and a bit agitated and grumpy at times. The best version of Tim Paine when playing cricket, wicketkeeping and captaining is someone who has a smile on his face, someone who is enjoying the game. When i’m like that, i’m a very good wicketkeeper.
‘i think if you pretend yesterday was OK, my behaviour was OK and my wicketkeeping was OK, you’ve probably got a problem. i’m someone who prides himself on the way he leads this team and yesterday was a poor reflection of that. My leadership wasn’t good enough, i let the pressure of the game get to me.’