Victorious Australian cricket captain Tim Paine said his decision to stand up to Virat Kohli wasn’t pre-planned, but his “gut feeling” said it was the right time to act.
Kohli was quite vocal during the second innings, sledging Australian players and geeing up the crowd.
Paine said he felt someone on the team needed to make a statement.
“I think sometimes you’ve got to go with your gut feel and I think it was just one of those moments that there comes a time where you’ve got to stand your ground and I think it was important that someone did,” Paine told SEN Cricket.
“At times, you’ve got no choice (but to stand your ground) so if you’re go to give it, it’s going to come back, and I felt it was the right moment for someone in our team to do it.
“We still want to play a really aggressive brand of cricket and stick up for each other and be passionate about that.”
Paine hopes the inexperienced Aussie team gets some confidence out of levelling the series at 1-1.
“We’ve copped a bit of strife and probably rightly so from some of our performances, but as I’ve said our batting group’s been working really hard, we feel that we’re getting better all the time and we know our bowling attack is world class,” he said.
“I think the boys will get a bit of confidence out of getting a Test win under their belts.”
The third Test will take place in Melbourne on Boxing Day with the series now perfectly poised.
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