Former Australia captain Michael Clarke has recently commented that Australian players fear to lose their IPL contracts. During the 2018-19 India’s tour to Australia, the Virat Kohli-led had won the Test series for the first time. But Clarke felt the hosts weren’t playing with that aggressiveness they used to play, and feared to lose the IPL 2019 season.
However, Australian Test captain Tim Paine has now dismissed Clarke’s claims, saying that no player on his team during the series was thinking about the IPL. Instead, every bowler he has the ball in his hand is in the sauna to get the Indian captain out. Paine revealed that the Australian players did not engage in much sledding with Kohli when someone conflicted with him.
“I didn’t notice a lot of people being nice to the Indian captain or not trying to get him out or anything like that. I thought everybody with the ball in hand or when we were batting, we were just trying to win the game for Australia. I don’t know who was going easy on him; “We don’t want to provoke any fight with him because we think he was playing his best in those games,” he said in an interview.
I didn’t back down, Tim Paine said
Recalling the fight between him and Virat Kohli in the Perth Test, Tim Paine referred to the documentary released on Amazon Prime ‘The Test’. The latter was pumped up and certain things were heated in the middle. Paine, while batting, started communicating with him, and the on-field umpires also had to intervene.
The 35-year-old said he had nothing to lose as he did not play in the IPL, but his players gave 100% in every Test match. “Who knows what will be going to happen in the series and as we’ve seen in the documentary, some of those games are still very hot. I didn’t back down, but then again, the IPL is not a big draw for me at this point, so I had nothing to lose.
“But anytime our guys go out and play a Test match for Australia, they give their full amount, and I’m sure they don’t think about the IPL deal when they are bowling and bowling for Virat,” he said.
