Michael Clarke has said he believes the Australian team “sucked up” to Virat Kohli-led India during the Test series Down Under last year in order to secure high-paying Indian Premier League contracts.
Talking to Big Sports Breakfast, the former Aussie captain said that Tim Paine and his men were “too scared” to sledge the Indian players.
“Everybody knows how powerful India are in regards to the financial part of the game, internationally or domestically with the IPL,” said Clarke. “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.”
India had defeated Australia 2-1 in the 2018-19 four-Test series, with the hosts competing without their key players Steve Smith and David Warner.
Clarke added: “Name a list of ten players and they are bidding for these Australian players to get into their IPL team. 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 became a little bit softer or not as hard as we’re accustomed to seeing.”
The IPL auction in December 2019 saw Pat Cummins become the most expensive overseas buy as the Kolkata Knight Riders him in for a record sum of Rs 15.5 crore.
In the Amazon documentary The Test – A New Era for Australia’s Team, Justin Langer said that he was angered by Kohli’s behaviour in the Perth Test. The Australian coach suggest that his team’s hands were tied because of the backlash they received after the ball-tampering episode in South Africa.
“I remember that afternoon [feeling] like a punching bag. We can’t fight back because it felt like we had our hands behind our backs and we just had to take it,” Langer said in the documentary. “It just felt a bit double standards to me. Imagine if we behaved two out of ten (of) that.”