ICC World Cup 2019 | Aaron Finch dismisses Adam Zampa ball tampering claims
Australian skipper Aaron Finch has revealed that Adam Zampa carries hand warmers in his pockets every game and hence the photos of him online that seemed to be suggestive of ball tampering were giving the wrong picture. He went on to discuss the player’s sub-par performance against the Indian team.
Fifteen months have passed since the infamous ball tampering incident against South Africa, but the after effects of it could still be felt by the Australian cricketing team. Be it the boos from the English crowd for Steve Smith and David Warner or the fact that every little action of the players is coming under scrutiny, it would take some time for them to recover from the blow they had faced.
Though Virat Kohli silenced the boos in a wonderful gesture, a suspicious act by Adam Zampa got on the radar of the online media yet again. He was seen putting his hands in his pockets time and again at the start of the 11th over and while the common opinion was it might be another attempt at ball fixing, Finch dismissed the issue as something quite trivial.
“I haven’t seen the photos, but I know that he has hand warmers in his pocket. He has them every single game he plays. I honestly haven’t seen them, so I can’t comment too much on it. But I know for a fact that he has hand warmers every game,” said Finch, reported The Indian Express .
The leg spinner never really got a grip in the match and was hit all over the park by the Indian openers. He ended with figures of 0/50 after bowling only six overs of the allowed quota of 10.
“I think he just started his spell poorly today, which gave them an opportunity to get on top of him, and when you’re bowling to world-class players and they get on top of you early, it can be quite hard to come back,” Finch said off the performance.
With multiple good partnerships between the top order batsmen, Finch also said that Zampa did not quite upset the batsmen as by the time he had been bowling to them, they had already settled themselves into the game, the lack of which had seen him excel against the same opposition in a bilateral tournament earlier this year.
“He never had the chance to really bowl at a new batter a hell of a lot, which probably was the difference in the Indian series where we managed to get some wickets up front and there would be an opportunity that he could really go to work on a new batter,” Finch concluded.