Not sure who was going easy on Kohli to protect IPL contracts: Paine on Clarke's comments

Australian cricket team didn't want to unnecessarily provoke Virat Kohli but his predecessor Michael Clarke's claims of players being scared to sledge the Indian captain in order to protect their IPL deals is far from truth, said current Test skipper Tim Paine.

Paine rubbished Clarke's claims that his team had "sucked up" to Kohli in order to land fat deals with IPL franchises, calling it a a tactical decision not to engage Kohli into verbal duel during the 2018-19 series but there was no other motivation.

"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."