Twitter goes berserk as Tim Paine blames the historic Gabba defeat on India's 'sideshows'

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It has been just a little over 100 days that a severely toned-down, battered and bruised set of youngsters did the unthinkable. The massive Gabbatoir, Australia’s pride, a venue where their invincibility ran for 32 long years, was breached by the Pants, Sundars, Natarajans, and Sirajs hailing from the hinterlands of India.

There exists no absolute list of the greatest Test matches ever but there is no chance that India’s Gabba heroics will skip a mention if there ever was one. Or if there ever will be one. During India’s tour Down Under in 2018, many negated India’s success by the absence of key Australia players. The absence of David Warner and Steve Smith was equalled as India not having Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara or Rohit Sharma.

Little did anyone know that the breachers of the Gabba will be those who had nothing in name of experience; who were never pronounced in the same breath as Kohli, Warner, Smith, and Pujara. After that historic and lifetime achievement of sorts by the Indians, Australian skipper Tim Paine has attributed Australia’s loss to India’s ‘sideshows’. None of it in the sense that those hot-blooded men showed incredible guts and courage to fight it out and attain that crown but in the sense that they were good distractors.

Indians very good at niggling and trying to distract, says Paine

In a media interaction on the function of the Chappell Foundation, Paine said: “Part of the challenge of playing against India is they’re very good at niggling you and trying to distract you with stuff that doesn’t really matter and there were times in that series where we fell for that,” Paine was quoted as saying by news.com.au.

“The classic example was when they said they weren’t going to the Gabba so we didn’t know where we were going. They’re very good at creating these sideshows and we took our eye off the ball,” he added.

His statement was out and the social media drumbeats were heard in no time. When an Australian captain says anything, it creates uproars anyway, and when Paine does, the reactions attracted are a notch or two higher.

Here are some of the responses: