‘What on earth is wrong with them?’ – David Llyod bashes Tim Paine for his abusive remarks at Ravi Ashwin during SCG Test

David Lloyd, the former England cricketer, came down hard on Australian skipper Tim Paine after the latter’s banter with Ravi Ashwin in the third Sydney Test. During the final day’s play when the visitors were chasing 407 runs, Paine engaged in a verbal war with Ashwin, who was showing a great amount of resilience with the bat in hand in India’s second innings.

Paine turned a bit abusive, using the word, ‘d⋆⋆⋆⋆ead’ and it hasn’t gone down well with Lloyd by any stretch of the imagination. The current commentator reckons that Paine has to transform himself to set an example for the rest of his teammates. Lloyd was clear cut in saying that he wouldn’t hold any respect for those, who talked to him in the way Paine did to Ashwin.

Tim Paine left me flabbergasted: David Lloyd

“It’s up to Paine now to control his players, but first he has to set an example. Put it like this: if someone had talked to me like he did to Ravichandran Ashwin, I’d have lost all respect for them. The way he was carrying on behind the stumps left me flabbergasted,” Lloyd wrote in his column for The Daily Mail.

“I played the game for two decades, and sledging didn’t really exist. People go on about Ian Chappell and his Australia team, but what the likes of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson said to us was just banter. They never said anything that made me not want to have a beer with them after the game,” he stated.

Lloyd reckons that the ball-tampering saga at the Newlands should have opened their eyes. But as per him, instead of learning, the Aussies are recurring mistakes.

“You’d have thought the Australians would watch their Ps and Qs after that farce with the sandpaper. But they just don’t seem to learn. What on earth is wrong with them?” Lloyd added.

Apart from Paine, even Steve Smith came under fire for scuffing up the pitch in India’s second innings of the Sydney Test. Later, Paine supported Smith, who feels that the issue has been blown out of proportion.