The banter between Tim Paine and Rishabh Pant was one of the highlights of India’s historic tour of Australia last year. Among Paine’s many jibes at the young Indian wicket-keeper was the one in which he asked if Pant could ‘babysit’ for him and his wife after the series gets over.
This was followed by Paine’s wife Bonnie sharing a picture on her Instagram with Pant and the Aussie couple’s kids which went viral.
While doing commentary for a match in the ongoing Big Bash League (BBL), Paine finally revealed the reason behind his ‘babysitter’ banter with Pant.
The Australian Test skipper said that his team decided to get into Pant’s head due to the latter’s tendency to play loose shots but more due to the fact that they were just bored.
“Geez we were bored, (we) could not get a wicket,” Paine said.
“Well Ricky (Ponting) knows him quite well – one, he’s very, very good, but two, we found out early in that series that sledging him was a waste of time,” he added.
Pant is a seriously talented player: Paine
“It just didn’t bother him, but what we found was that you could get a real lapse of concentration out of him so we went a bit that way.
“So I just tried to put him off and talk rubbish to try and get him involved because he was likely to play a poor shot at time. But he’s a seriously talented player,” Paine said.
Talking about his wife’s photo with Pant going viral, Paine said, “I don’t think she was watching. Then I think she had got a bit of it through her Instagram and then she put up that photo on and as it happens, and as it’s happened, she had a million new Indian followers the next day so she panicked a little bit that it was on the news.”
