Michael Clarke Explains Why Australian Players Are Too Scared To Sledge Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli’s love-hate relationship with Australia is well known. From showing the middle-finger to crowd during the infamous tour of 2011, the brainfade incident to the numerous sledging encounters with Australia’s players during the 2018-19 series, Virat Kohli has never shied away from giving it back to the Aussies.

However, former Australia skipper Michael Clarke believes that Australia’s players shied away from sledging the India skipper. Speaking on Big Sports Breakfast, the World Cup-winning skipper said Australian cricket went through a phase when players were too scared to sledge Indian stars especially Virat Kohli for fear it could jeopardise their contracts in the lucrative IPL.

He went as far as saying that his compatriots ‘sucked up’ to Virat Kohli and India to protect their million dollar IPL deals. Michael Clarke said that the fear of saving their IPL deals made Australian cricket ‘soft’.

“Everybody knows how powerful India are in regards to the financial part of the game, internationally or domestically with the IPL,” Michael Clarke said.

“I feel that Australian cricket, and probably every other team over a little period, went the opposite and actually sucked up to India. They were too scared to sledge Kohli or the other Indian players because they had to play with them in April,” he added.

Michael Clarke said a number of Indian superstars like Kohli and Rohit Sharma were captains of their IPL franchises and thus part of the bidding process. He opined that the players were so desperate to get the lucrative contracts that they compromised Australia’s traditional attitude for that.

“Name a list of ten players and they are bidding for these Australian players to get into their IPL team,” he said.

“The players were like: “I’m not going to sledge Kohli, I want him to pick me for Bangalore so I can make my $1 million US for my six weeks”.

“I feel like that’s where Australia went through that little phase where our cricket become a little bit softer or not as hard as we’re accustomed to seeing,” he added.

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