Pat Cummins on Thursday responded to Michael Clarke’s comments about the Australian cricketers ‘sucking up’ to Virat Kohli and not sledding him to protect their IPL contract.

The Australia vice-captain said that they were looking to play “less aggressively” to revive the image of Australian cricket after the ball-tampering scandal had put that in shambles.

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Unlike his Test skipper Tim Paine, who outrightly denied that IPL had anything to do with the players not sledging Kohli during India’s tour of 2018/19, Cummins did not entirely rule out Clarke’s assumptions.

“I think probably a bigger factor was six months before leading into that Indian series the media and everyone commentating on the Aussie cricket team were pretty clear in their direction in the way they wanted the Aussies team to go and that was playing a little bit less aggressively out on the field,” Cummins told the BBC Sport.

“I’d say that would have been a bigger factor than trying to win or lose friends out on the cricket field. But you never know, that might have been a factor for some players,” he added.

Earlier, Paine had said that they did not poke Kohli unnecessarily because they thought the Indian skipper plays at his best in such situations.

“We certainly had a thing where we didn’t want to provoke any fight with him (Virat Kohli) because we think that’s when he plays at his best,” Paine told ESPNcricinfo.

But Paine clarified that it did not mean that the Australians were soft to Kohli and were trying to please him to protect their IPL contracts. He said everytime Kohli came to bat the bowlers and the fielders gave their all to get him out.

“I certainly wasn’t holding back, but again the IPL’s not a huge draw for me at the moment, so I had nothing to lose. But anytime our guys go out and play a Test match for Australia, they’ll be giving their absolute all and I’m pretty sure they’re not thinking about an IPL contract when they’re running in, bowling to Virat,” Paine added.

Former Australia captain Michael Clarke on Tuesday said that the aura of Kohli 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.

“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,” Clarke said on Big Sports Breakfast as quoted by IANS.