Tim Paine Hits Back At Michael Clarke's IPL Contracts Comments

Australia’s Test captain Tim Paine has ridiculed Michael Clarke’s comments on the Australians being too nice with Virat Kohli and the Indian team to save their IPL contracts. Former Australian skipper Michael Clarke had said that Everybody knows how powerful India are in regards to the financial part of the game, internationally or domestically with the IPL.

He even went on to say that I feel that Australian cricket, and probably every other team over a short period, went the opposite and 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.

However, Cricket Australia’s (CA) current representative in the most extended format of the game, Tim Paine has ridiculed Clarke’s comments stating that Clarke’s assumption does not hold true.

Tim Paine Turns Down Michael Clarke’s IPL Contracts Claims

“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 ESPNcricinfo. “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,” Paine said.

India are scheduled to tour Australia from October 2020 to January 2021 to play four Tests, three One Day Internationals and three Twenty20 International matches.

“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 said.

“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,” he added.

What You Say On The Field Is Almost Irrelevant: Tim Paine

“What you say on the field is irrelevant 99% of the time,” Paine said. “Sometimes you can get a little inside someone’s head or something like that, but if you’re not batting well and not bowling well, all the talk in the world doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

“There’s no doubt our first focus is on executing our skill and being as good as we can possibly be in that area and then sometimes things happen on a cricket field and you’ve got to go in, you’ve got to change your tack, or you’ve got to have a few words,” Paine added.

Tim Paine concluded, “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.”

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