Paine said his intention was to distract Kohli rather than firing him up.
Under Kohli’s leadership, India won their maiden Test series on Australian soil in 2018-19 when Paine was at the helm of affairs for the home team.
In that series series, Paine and Kohli were involved in verbal banter and nearly had a physical altercation in the second Test at Perth.
Speaking to CricTracker, Tim Paine admitted that even if the opposition players don’t sledge Kohli, he would end up scoring the runs. He further stated that his intention was to distract Kohli rather than firing him up.
"People used to say, don't sledge Virat. If you don't sledge Virat... most of the time still get runs, so it doesn't really matter whether you're talking to him or not," Paine said.
"I wouldn't try too much to fire up Virat, but I would try and distract him if I could because if you can get a bit of a distraction, he might play a bad shot or lose his concentration. But it used to annoy me when people say, oh, don't sledge him, because people don't get better because someone's talking to them," he added.
In the Amazon documentary, The Test, Tim Paine has opened up about the sledging incident: “I was just sitting and watching him and he gave few of our guys send-offs. The plan was not to talk to him when he was batting.”
“When we were batting, it’s kind of up to the individual they want to do. And I sort of just had enough and thought you also have to stand up for yourselves and stand up for your teammates. And that was one of the reasons,” Paine recalled.
“He was trying to upset me with the part-time captain and I sort of went the opposite with him. I was sort of telling him how good he was and that he was the greatest player ever.”
“You don’t want to get right into a fight with him because that’s what he likes. I was just trying to poke him a little bit and see if I could get him to implode a little bit,” he remarked.
Virat Kohli is set to tour Australia with the Indian team again towards the end of this year. India are slated to play five Tests against the reigning world Test champions.