England cricket fans rubbing salt in the wounds of the Aussies in the ongoing ODI series between the two countries has not gone down too well with Darren Lehmann.
The former Australia coach, who resigned in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal which occurred during Australia’s tour of South Africa, was not happy with some of the shenanigans which occurred during the first ODI between the two sides on Wednesday at the Oval.
Before the start of the match, an advertising stunt saw pieces of ‘Australian ball-tampering grade sandpaper’ being handed out to fans entering the ground.
It was reported that over 5, 000 of these cards were confiscated by authorities inside the ground.
The stunt was in response to the ball-tampering episode in which Cameron Bancroft had been caught on camera shining the ball with a sandpaper.
Lehmann took to Twitter to express his disapproval at the advertising stunt to British journalist Alison Mitchell. The journalist had posted an image of the sandpaper cards being handed out to fans outside the stadium.
Your better than that @AlisonMitchell ? https://t.co/K0cRLyJlgh
— Darren Lehmann (@darren_lehmann) June 13, 2018
Lehmann wrote, “Your better than that @AlisonMitchell?”
It has to be said that before the start of the series, Australia’s newly appointed coach Justin Langer and ODI captain Tim Paine had stated that they expected to cop some punishment from their Ashes rivals during the five-match ODI series and one-off T20I.
I’m pretty lucky being in the middle I can’t hear anything,” Paine had said at the press conference before the start of the series.
“I haven’t spoken to the (other guys) but there wasn’t any talk of copping too much stick out there which is nice.
“Maybe if we win a few games they might.”
Australia were beaten by three wickets on Wednesday as England took a 1-0 lead in the series.
