Australia vs India: Tim Paine asks Murali Vijay if he likes Virat Kohli as a bloke

Australia are the favourites to level the series and they are not mincing words at all.

Published - 17 Dec 2018, 14:18 IST | Updated - 17 Dec 2018, 14:18 IST

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The banter between the players in the middle in the ongoing Perth Test is increasing with Australia having the upper hand. They stretched their lead to 286 runs and before being bundled out in the post lunch session. With the pitch cracking and spitting venom, batting was not going to be easy at all. To make it worse, India got off to a worst possible start in their second innings. This was the opportunity for the Australians to play the mind games and it was none other than the skipper Tim Paine who started the proceedings.

KL Rahul’s bad form continued haplessly while Cheteshwar Pujara got a good nut from Josh Hazlewood to leave them reeling at 13/2. The onus was upon Murali Vijay and Virat Kohli now and they stepped up to the task by weathering the storm really well. This is when Paine decided to start talking to the former and make it tough for him even to score the runs.

Earlier in the day, Kohli had tried to get into his head by constantly speaking to him and almost had a physical altercation when Paine was running.

Do you like him?

Tim Paine, indirectly took a dig at his Indian counterpart, when Nathan Lyon was bowling. He asked Vijay if he likes Kohli- the captain, as a human being and assumed that the Indian opener won’t be liking. It is actually interesting that the Aussie captain is fired up who is known to be a nice guy around. But no one expected this to be a quite series with the intensity with which the matches are played so far.

“Murali, I know he’s your captain. But you can’t seriously like him as a bloke,” Paine was heard saying to Vijay on the stump mic during the third session at the Optus Stadium. Vijay turned a deaf ear to it as he had a bigger job to do for his country. However, both Vijay and Kohli have been dismissed now as it looks only a matter of time for the tourists to go down.