Former Australia captain Michael Clarke believed that the aura of Virat Kohli has had a huge impact on Australian cricketers as they were scared to “sledge” the Indian captain and “sucked up” to him to protect their IPL deals.

The 2015 World Cup-winning skipper said that there was a phase in his country’s cricket and in other teams as well where the players believed sledging Kohli or other big Indian players may jeopardise their IPL career.

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“Everybody knows how powerful India are in regards to the financial part of the game, internationally or domestically with the IPL,” Clarke said on Big Sports Breakfast as quoted by IANS.

“I feel that Australian cricket, and probably every other team over a little period, went the opposite and actually sucked up to India. They were too scared to sledge Kohli or the other Indian players because they had to play with them in April,” he added.

Clarke felt that since Kohli or Rohit Sharma were the captains of the popular teams in the cash-rich league, the Australian players did not want to have their names registered on the bad books of Indian cricketers.

According to the 39-year-old, this behaviour of the Australian cricketers took away the ruthless nature that had defined his country’s cricket teams for decades.

“The players were like: ‘I’m not going to sledge Kohli, I want him to pick me for Bangalore so I can make my $1 million US for my six weeks’. “I feel like that’s where Australia went through that little phase where our cricket become a little bit softer or not as hard as we’re accustomed to seeing,” Clarke said.

The Indian captain, meanwhile, has had a bitter relationship with the Australians. Even though he had claimed to be “good friends” with them, the 2017 series, which included the infamous “brain fade moment” of Steve Smith, saw him changing his mind.

In 2018-19 tour Down Under as well, where India registered their first-ever Test series win in Australia, there were many moments were words were exchanged and a little banter took place between Kohli and Tim Paine.

(With IANS inputs)