Former Australia captain Allan Border has blasted batter, Steve Smith, for giving thumbs up to Indian bowlers after being repeatedly beaten by them in the first Test of the four-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which the visitors lost by an innings and 132 runs in three days.
Steve Smith was the lone survivor of the embarrassing second innings performance by Australia facing a 223 runs lead by India, who made 400 in their only innings, the Pat Cummins-led side crumbled for 91 all out with Smith remaining unbeaten on 25.
The Australian batters were beaten left, right, and center through the Test and looked absolutely clueless against the high-quality Indian spin bowling attack. Even Smith and Marnus Labuschagne failed to find an effective counter to the tweakers and despite good knocks in the first innings, couldn’t do much in the second do.
Smith was even seen giving ‘thumbs up’ numerous times to Indian bowlers in appreciation after he was being bettered by the wily craftsmen.
However, his gesture didn’t sit well with Allan Border who slammed Smith for his appreciative gesture to Indian bowlers.
“Play with a harder edge. I mean, we’re giving blokes the thumbs up when they’re beating us outside the off stump. What the hell is going on? That is just ridiculous. Don’t go stupid, but Australia play hard nose cricket. We’re even giving someone thumbs up … bloody hell,” Border said on Fox Sports.
The legendary captain said that Australia will need to figure some strategy out for the rest of the series.
“There’s so many scars there now, it’s going to be a tough few days. You can talk the talk, but ultimately the boys with the bat in hand and ball in hand have got to do the job. It’s going to be hard to find a way, but they’ve just got to do it. A big, soul-searching dressing room drink-a-thon tonight, just to try to thrash something out. That’s as bad as we can play, there’s only one way to go from here,” he added.
While Border was going red on Steve Smith, the Twitterverse was having fun with the Australian batter’s gesture and created funny memes to celebrate.
Here are some of them:
