The Australian cricket team is still coming to terms with the ball-tampering scandal, a controversy which shook the very foundation of cricket in the country. Steve Smith and David Warner, who were slapped with bans, are making their comebacks in the World Cup and there has been a concerted effort by the players and management to garner some respect of the audience.
As such, when cameras spotted Adam Zampa putting his hand into his pocket before rubbing the ball prior to bowling the 24th over, there were accusations hurled, especially on social media that attempts were being made to alter the condition of the ball.
However, Australian captain Aaron Finch rubbished all such theories and said that the leg-spinner was just using hand warmers and that it is used in all the matches. "I haven't seen the photos, but I know that he has hand warmers in his pocket," Finch told reporters. "He has them every single game he plays. I honestly haven't seen them (the images), so I can't comment too much on it. But I know for a fact that he has hand warmers every game."
Finch clarifies his comments, cites previous matches
Australia were beaten by a clinical Indian side at the Oval as they failed to chase down a target of 353 and fell short by 36 runs. It was a day when the Indian batsmen were at the dominant best and led by Shikhar Dhawan's smashing century, they posted 352 runs on the board.
Although the Australians made a good fist of things, the Indian bowlers had enough runs in the tank to clinch the match by 36 runs. Speaking on the performance of his side Finch said that his team failed to take wickets in the middle overs, which put them under a lot of pressure towards the back end of the innings.
"When you're bowling to world class players and they get on top of you early, it can be quite hard to come back, and for us not to be able to get wickets through that period as well, through the middle overs, he (Zampa) never had the chance to really bowl at a new batter a hell of a lot," Finch said.
He also added that while chasing, they lost wickets at regular intervals which made the job very tough for any new batsman walking in and the asking rate kept climbing all the time.
"I think India bowled really well with the new ball. I thought we could keep wickets then we could do some damage at the back end. But in the end we kept losing wickets at key intervals and when new batters come in the run rate keeps going up," the skipper further added.
