Tim Paine rejected Michael Clarke’s claims and revealed why they avoid any fight with Virat Kohli. He also said that IPL is not a huge draw for him at the moment.
Paine rubbishing Clarke’s claims
Michael Clarke earlier claimed that Australia sucked up to India and the players did not get involved with the skipper Kohli because of the IPL deal. The Australian cricket captain completely rubbished the thought. Tim Paine said, “I certainly didn’t notice too many people being that nice to Virat or not trying to get him out or anything like that.” In the conversation with ESPNcricinfo, Paine also explained, “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.”
Further, the skipper clearly said that the IPL contract is never on the mind of the players while they are facing Virat Kohli. “But anytime our guys go out and play a Test match for Australia, they’ll be giving their absolute all and I’m pretty sure they’re not thinking about an IPL contract when they’re running in, bowling to Virat.”
Paine on facing India and his team
Regarding the upcoming series against India in 2020 and 2021, Paine said, “Who knows what will happen this series and, as we saw in the documentary, there was still quite a lot of heat in some of those games. I certainly wasn’t holding back, but again the IPL’s not a huge draw for me at the moment, so I had nothing to lose.”
Paine went on to stand by his team and shared his pride for his entire team for the way the played cricket. “As we’ve seen the last 12 or 18 months, we still do that, we still stick up for each other, we still fight as hard as any Australian team, but we’ve probably just had to move with the times and I’ve been really proud of the way we’ve played out cricket,” he explained.
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