Tim Paine doesn't play IPL, so he can confront Indians in the Test series: Mohammad Kaif

Tim Paine is an excellent man behind the stumps and has done a decent job for Australia as a captain in the purest format of the game. However, the right-hander is not at his fluent best with the willow and is struggling to score runs for his side from the past many games. In his last ten innings, the right-hander has managed just two fifty-plus scores (0, 58, 23*, 1, 21, 13, 39, 0, 79, 35).

Cricket Australia had handed over the Test captaincy to Paine under dire circumstances as both their main players Steve Smith and David Warner were banned from the game after they were found guilty in the infamous ball-tampering scandal of 2018. Therefore, with both Warner and Smith back in the team, it would be difficult for Paine to get going without adding runs to the scoreboard.

Ahead of the highly-anticipated four-match Border Gavaskar Trophy between India and Australia, former Indian cricketer, Mohammad Kaif pointed out that the Indian players can be involved in a heated interaction with Australia’s Test skipper during the Test games.

Tim Paine can confront the Indians: Mohammad Kaif

Kaif believes that all the players including Aaron Finch, David Warner, and Pat Cummins play in the Indian Premier League, thus they won’t like to have any unpleasant experience with the Men in Blue. But the same cannot be said for Tim who doesn’t play in IPL and can confront the Indians.

“All the players who play in the IPL, whether it is (Aaron) Finch, (David) Warner or (Pat) Cummins, none of them are going to fight now. Tim Paine does not play, he knows that he is not going to come to India, he does not have anything to do with the IPL, so he can confront the Indians,” the 40-year-old said on the Sony Sports network.

Further in the interaction, the former Indian batsman made a big statement by saying that if Paine doesn’t score runs against India, then he can be dropped from the Playing XI. Thus Kaif advised the Australian skipper to focus only on his batting and keeping rather than captaincy.

“I feel by the time the Test series is over, Tim Paine would have been dropped. He is not able to score runs with the bat. He just got the captaincy because Smith and Warner had the problem at the time. They were banned, so he was made the captain in compulsion. Now that they have come back, if he doesn’t score, then his spot in the XI will also be difficult. So it will be better if he concentrates on batting and keeping only this time,” Kaif concluded.