Australian captain Tim Paine conducted an impromptu press conference early in the morning today and apologized publically for his on-field behaviour yesterday. Here is the excerpt for the conference.
“International cricket at the moment with the hub life and in the bubble you have a fair bit of time to yourself and last night for me was one of those moments to sit back and reflect on the Test match. I think it was important to address some things from yesterday. I want to apologise for the way I went about things yesterday. I’m someone who prides themselves on the way I lead this team and yesterday was a poor reflection of that.
“My leadership wasn’t good enough, I let the pressure of the game get to me, it affected my mood and then from there affected my performance. Yesterday when I came off the ground my reflection was purely on my wicketkeeping. Sitting back last night and reflecting on the whole game, I think I said to our players yesterday I’ve had a really poor game as a leader, not so much as a captain but certainly as a leader.
“I’m a captain who wants to enjoy the game. I’m a captain who wants to play the game with a smile on their face and yesterday I fell short of my expectations and our team standards. So, I’m human, I want to apologise for the mistakes that I made yesterday. It’s certainly not a reflection of the way I want to lead this team. We’ve set really high standards over the last 18 months and yesterday was a bit of a blip on the radar and something that I felt I needed to come out and address.
“Bitterly disappointed with the way I went about it. I felt my mood throughout the whole Test match was probably a little bit off, the way I spoke to the umpires early on day two was also unacceptable.
“I’ve got to cop that on the chin, it’s not the way I want to lead this Australian team, certainly not a reflection of how I want to do it going forward. I always talk to our players about playing this game on skill and not on emotion, and yesterday I fell short of my own standards and expectations.” Very disappointed with that but at the same time a bit of self reflection… Being able to learn from it and being able to move on to the Gabba Test which is more important. So, I want to come on and address that this morning and again apologize to our fans and to the people who heard some of the things I said yesterday.
“Normally for a wicketkeeper if I’m dropping catches then I’ve looked at the technical stuff, and that was okay, so for me I think it was all around my mood, being a bit tense, and not being focused on my number one job at the time, which is to catch the ball. I was distracted by other stuff and a little bit agitated and grumpy at times. So for me the best version of Tim Paine playing cricket and wicketkeeping and captaining is someone who’s got a smile on his face, someone who is enjoying the game and when I’m like that, I’m a very good wicketkeeper.
“I think if you pretend yesterday was okay, and my behaviour was okay and my wicketkeeping was okay then you’ve probably got a problem. But I’ve said a few times in the last six months I feel like I’m actually getting better as a cricketer. I’ve played my best cricket in the last six months, yesterday was a poor day.
“I think the standards we’ve set ourselves over the last two and a half years has been a really high standard and we want that. We know people around the country look up to us and look to us for leadership and our kids look up to us as heroes. So we know people expect that from us now and we understand that’s how it is and we sign up for that and I was the one who fell short of that yesterday.
“I spoke to JL [Justin Langer], Andrew McDonald and Matthew Mott – and that was exactly what I said, I felt I had a really poor game in terms of my leadership and that affected our team.
“I raised it with [Langer] and said – look, there’s little things, I’m normally a pretty relaxed person in the changerooms. And even when we were batting in this Test, I was on edge – I was wandering around the changerooms. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t watch and I think that added to the tension in our changerooms and I pride myself on, if anything, taking the tension out of our changeroom, not adding to it.”
He also added that he spoke to Ashwin and apologised for his behaviour.
“I spoke to (Ashwin) quickly after the game yesterday, and I said to him ‘yeah, you end up looking the fool, you open your mouth and you end up dropping a catch’,” he added.
“We had a bit of a laugh about that … and everything was fine.”
Australian Captain Tim Paine called an impromptu press conference this morning to apologise for his behaviour during the third Test. ????#AUSvIND pic.twitter.com/MGBRtujjUJ
— Chloe-Amanda Bailey (@ChloeAmandaB) January 12, 2021
