Paine rejects Clarke’s remarks

SYDNEY: Australia’s Test cricket captain Tim Paine has rejected his predecessor Michael Clarke’s contention that some members of the national team had been “too scared” to take on Virat Kohli too aggressively in their 2018-19 encounters for fear of what it would do to potentially lucrative Indian Premier League deals.

With India scheduled to tour Australia for a Test series next summer, Clarke had reckoned that the prospect of endangering contracts in the IPL had played on the minds of some of Paine’s team as they lost the series 2-1 in the absence of the banned Steven Smith and David Warner.

The return of that pair to the Australian side has made a marked difference over the past 12 months, pushing them up to a clear second place on the World Test Championship table.

Paine, who is seen in the Amazon documentary, ‘The Test’, counselling his team not to give Kohli too much aggression to feed off during the series, said that beyond tactical attempts to keep India’s captain quiet there were no other motivations involved as Clarke had suggested.

“I certainly didn’t notice too many people being that nice to Virat or not trying to get him out or anything like that,” Paine told Cricinfo. “I thought everyone who had the ball in their hand or when we were batting were trying their absolute best to win the game for Australia. I’m not sure who was going easy on him; we certainly had a thing where we didn’t want to provoke any fight with him because we think that’s when he plays at his best.”