Tim Paine invents new way to tackle Neil Wagner’s short balls in the Boxing Day Test

Neil Wagner has been the bane of batsmen, given that the left-arm fast bowler has mastered the art of bouncing out his opponents, even on the deadest of pitches. He unleashed a short ball barrage on England batsmen some time back in his own backyard, and in the ongoing Test series against Australia, has made the likes of Smith, Warner and co hop, skip and jump to the tune of his bouncers.

Some of his deliveries on the ongoing Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) hit the batsmen all over their body and he had Australia’s best batsman Steve Smith taking evasive action at all times while taking some hits on the body as well. Even Matthew Wade felt the heat from the short bowling by Kiwi bowlers led by Neil Wagner. However, skipper Tim Paine found a novel and hilarious way of dealing with the deadly bowling in his unique style.

Tim Paine runs towards Neil Wagner to tackle his bouncers

Tim Paine knew he had to do something in order to neutralize the short ball advantage that Wagner was having over the Kangaroos’ batsmen. He found out a novel way of doing it, as in the 137^th over of the match, Wagner ran in to bowl a bouncer, Paine, who was standing close to his stumps with a typical right-handed stance, ran towards the bowler in a surprising manner.

Here is the video of the same:

Meanwhile, the commentators had a lot of chuckle with Paine running down the wicket to a genuine fast bowler, who bowls a mean bouncer. But the Aussie captain’s idea proved successful as the ball passed over his head to keeper BJ Watling without doing much damage, who even mocked running his Australian counterpart out.

Paine’s idea proved fruitful, as he scored a brilliant 79 and helped centurion Travis Head (114) to take his team to a daunting score of 467 runs. Neil Wagner returned figures of 4/83, while Tim Southee (3/108), Colin de Grandhomme (2/68) and Tim Southee with one wicket were the other successful bowlers for the Kiwis, while spinner Mitchell Santner remained largely ineffective.

Watch: AB de Villiers’ monstrous six in MSL 2019