Five Indian players were clicked having food at a restaurant in Melbourne after India's famous series-levelling victory.
Australia’s former and new Test skippers Tim Paine and Pat Cummins have opened up on a sense of bitterness within the Australian camp during India’s famous tour Down Under in 2020-21.
Remembered for India’s inspirational comeback trail to reclaim the Border-Gavaskar Trophy with a 2-1 end scoreline, the four-Test series had its fair share of ups and downs and controversies, too.
In a contentious off-field issue, a video emerged over social media wherein five Indian cricketers – Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shaw and Navdeep Saini – were alleged to have broken the Covid-19 regulations in place. The issue was related to them going for food at a public restaurant in Melbourne.
A disciplined touring party, the Indians followed the directives issued by the Cricket Australia (CA) and Australian government authorities and got confined to a hotel, before returning negative Covid tests upon successive checking.
But even as the series resumed safely from there, Cummins and Paine revealed there was a genuine sense of worry and disappointment within the Australian camp. Cummins said the Indians flouted with the rules in play, while Paine accused the visitors of putting the entire series at risk.
“It did annoy quite a few of the boys” – Pat Cummins
“I mean those four or five guys put the whole Test series at risk,” Paine said as a part of the Voot documentary on India’s Test series triumph, named ‘Bando Main Tha Dum’.
“For what? For a bowl a Nando’s chips or wherever they went, like I just find that pretty selfish to be honest,” he added.
None of the Indian players tested positive and the series continued safely through to the New Year’s Test in Sydney and the famous deciding fixture in Brisbane.
But Pat Cummins confirmed the restaurant incident “did annoy” many from the then Paine-led Australian Test side, especially as the series carried immense financial importance to CA and any breach of the virus into either team’s camp would’ve put the entire thing at risk of jeopardy.
“It did annoy quite a few of the boys, especially the ones who had to spend a Christmas without their families. That was sacrificing quite a bit to be there on the tour to hear that the other team were flouting the rules and not taking it seriously,” he said.
