Australia captain Steve Smith admitted to have erred in seeking help from his dressing room after being adjudged leg-before in the second innings of the second Test as his side crashed to a 75-run defeat at the hands of India in Bengaluru.
“I got hit on the pad and looked down to Petey [Handscomb, the non striker] and said ‘look up there’ and I turned around and said ‘what do you reckon?’ [to Handscomb],” Smith said. “It was a bit of a brain fade on my behalf and I shouldn’t have done that,” he added.
The incident sparked off a furore among the Indian players, with Virat Kohli reporting the incident to the on-field umpires. Smith finally got his marching orders from Nigel Llong, who warned him against consulting the opinion of his teammates in the dressing room.
Indian skipper Kohli lashed out at Smith in the post-match press conference, claiming that he had seen them wait for the green signal from their dressing room at least on two previous occasions in the match. Smith insisted that, “the game was played in good spirits and nobody crossed the line.”
Smith’s teammate Shaun Marsh was also ruled out leg-before after not offering a shot. Replays, though, showed that Umesh Yadav’s delivery was missing the stumps. The Australian skipper revealed that miscommunication led to the umpire’s decision not being reviewed, “In regards to Shaun’s one, we weren’t entirely sure,” Smith said. “I sort of said ‘go’ as in ‘go have a look at it’ and he turned around and started walking,” Smith added.
The 27-year-old also rued not taking matters in his own hands about Marsh’s decision, “I should’ve probably just put my hands up and done it. We saw the replay and it was missing the stumps so it would have been a nice one to have reviewed.”
Smith also singled out the 118-run stand between Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane for the fifth wicket for India as a game-changer, “It’s disappointing to have lost this Test match. The first couple of days we played some pretty good cricket and as I said before the game we were expecting India to come back hard. Their second innings batting, they played some good cricket. The partnership between [Cheteshwar] Pujara and [Ajinkya] Rahane was a really good one and gave them a reasonable lead,” Smith said.
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