Australia’s stand-in-skipper Tim Paine issued an apology and said Australia must take some positives from a horrible 24 hours.
Meanwhile, amidst all this scandal, the host defeated the Aussies by 322 runs to go 2-1 up in the series.
Paine stepped in as the skipper after Steven Smith and his deputy David Warner stepped down from their respective posts for the rest of the match in the wake of the ball tampering scandal.
Meanwhile, ICC gave a one-match ban to Smith following his admission that he was a party to a decision to alter the ball’s condition while Cameron Bancroft avoided the ban, but got three demerit points.
The Proteas banked on Morne Morkel’s nine-wicket haul in the match, as the tourists collapsed from 57 without loss to 107 all out.
Paine apologises for the horrible incident:
Post Australia’s loss, Paine expressed his remorse for an incident which has tarnished Australia’s reputation. He also admitted his disappointment in the manner they lost to go 2-1 down.
“It’s been a horrible 24 hours to be perfectly honest. I’d like to take the opportunity to apologise to our fans and the Australians back home and over here, they deserve better than what we put up on Saturday,” Paine said.
“It was difficult, no doubt, but that was one of the things we spoke about this morning that we can control. The fact that we can go out today and compete. From that cricket perspective, it was extremely disappointing. The way we’ve, I suppose, folded in that last hour or 45 minutes is really disappointing on top of what was already a horrible Test match,” he added.
Paine hopeful to learn from this:
However, the wicket-keeper batsman is hopeful Australia team will learn from this episode.
“It was difficult for all of us. The last 24 hours has been a real challenge, but down the track, there is an opportunity for us to grow as a team and individuals from it. We’ve got to try and take some sort of positive out of it long term and turn ourselves into the cricket team we want to be,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, the fourth and final Test starts from March 30 at Johannesburg.
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