Tim Paine’s bond with Will Pucovski revealed ahead of likely Test debut in Sydney
The 36-year-old Test skipper and 22-year-old batting prodigy might seem an unlikely match. But Tim Paine and Will Pucovski have formed a close bond in the Aussie camp.
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Tim Paine’s hope for Will Pucovski is that he’s as good a Test batsman as he is at FIFA.
Part of the bonding process between the veteran captain and the emerging youngster 14 years his junior, has been to engage in constant football battles on the PlayStation.
The Australian skipper is following the blueprint of previous successful captains including Michael Vaughan, who felt that you’ve got to know the man before you get to know the player.
Or at least that’s Paine’s excuse, because his good intentions aren’t being reflected on the scoreboard, where sources say he is schooled on a daily and sometimes hourly basis.
But the key to the relationship is it has extended well beyond virtual reality.
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When Pucovski was floored by a crushing short ball in the Australia A tour match against the Indians last month, Paine understood the magnitude of what that sobering moment meant more than anyone.
Every minute Pucovski spent in Dr John Orchard’s medical room that afternoon receiving tests and assessment, Paine never left his side.
On the bus on the way back to the team hotel, Paine made sure he was sat there in the seat next to him.
Given Pucovski’s complicated history of having so often come to the cusp of a Test debut only to have to pull back at the last moment, Paine saw it as his duty to be personally invested in making the 22-year-old feel he didn’t need a baggy green to already feel part of the fold.
“That was probably how it started. I just wanted to try to make him comfortable and make him feel part of the group as much as I could and we struck up a pretty good friendship, even though there’s a fair age difference,” said Paine.
“I enjoy spending time with him and I find if I can spend time with him one-on-one and then quietly, I can start to learn a bit more about how he ticks and that can help me captain and lead him when I’m out in the middle as well. It works well both ways.”
Perhaps the reason why the oldest and second youngest members of the dressing room have hit it off is because Pucovski shares Paine’s scallywag sense of humour and delights in stirring the pot.
Sources say Pucovski spends 30 minutes setting up his formations and teams, where as Paine just gets on with it.
That said, reports suggest Paine believes there’s competitive tension between he and Pucovski on the PlayStation controls, when in reality it seems the kid is just humouring ‘dad’.
“We’re pretty similar off the field, we have similar interests. He likes a bit of smack talk,” said Paine.
“He’s a bit cheeky … he doesn’t mind giving the older blokes a bit of stick.”
Most thought Pucovski’s head knock was going to rule him out of another summer, but in Justin Langer’s words, the Victorian has decided he wants to get back on the horse.
Paine’s mission to take Pucovski under his wing – often at great personal embarrassment to himself – has played no small part.
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Marnus (Labuschagne), Steve (Smith) and I were at dinner at the team hotel after arriving in Sydney.
Whenever the three of us get together, talk turns to cricket and tactics.
We’ve had a few chats among ourselves since the Melbourne Test, most of them about our plans for the SCG.
The three of us went down for a net session the next day on what would have been the fifth day at the MCG.
We worked on tactics for handling Ravi Ashwin, on how to score when he bowls that leg stump line and packs the legside field.
A lot of talk goes on among the group between games about bowlers, the field placements and things we can do better.
We’ve got a lot better at sharing each other’s plans and that makes it easy in the middle when batting.
If I know what Marnus or Smithy or whoever else I’m batting with is trying to do to a certain bloke, then I can feed in to that strategy on the spot.
Most of you have probably seen The Test (documentary) and how we handled the loss at Headingley.
In that instance I looked around the room and everybody was devastated about losing a game we should have won and I knew I had to get on top of that.
I gathered my thoughts in the shower, said a few things and told everybody we had to move on.
The next morning we went over the game again, which was a brave thing to do, had breakfast and started planning for the next match.
My job is to read the room and it was a very different situation in Melbourne.
We were disappointed, but not devastated.
I had a lot to do after the game.
There were captain’s meetings and we got fined for slow over rates, so I had to be a part of that before joining the boys.
When I got back we all just sat around and had a beer, wound down and maybe 30 minutes in we had a chat about what had taken place.
Sometimes after you have played poorly it’s not a bad thing to have time to sit and reflect as individuals and then bring it all together.
The conversations have to be had – you can’t ignore the things you do badly – and we spoke about plans to deal with the Indians, how we can score more runs against them, do we think our bowling plans are working, can we improve even our bowling performances, what are we seeing …
Everyone contributes, it is a very open conversation.
It’s not a complicated game.
Sometimes you can sit around and look for things, but we just need to bat better for longer.
We’ve allowed them to build pressure on us and we haven’t found a way to get through it.
After facing things like that, you have informal chats.
Obviously we were disappointed – by the result but mainly with the way we played – but I reiterated that we have world class players in this team and I have full confidence that it will all come good.
We’re working hard and we’ve responded well to a loss before – as you saw with Headingley. We know how to handle those situations and from that moment everyone has been really keen to get to Sydney and to prepare for the next game.
As I’ve said for the past 12 months, good teams look forward, poor ones look backward.
You leave a loss there in the dressing room.
Our fielding was not up to scratch, but that can happen.
It happened to India in the first Test.
In Melbourne it felt a little bit like the mistakes gained a bit of momentum; you drop one, you drop two, sport is one of those funny things.
It’s the same when you watch the footy, a team kicks three behinds then misses another one and everyone starts thinking about it and you get a bit tight and drop or miss a few more.
You want it so badly, you want to be winning and maybe you try too hard.
I think we tried too hard, sometimes you just have to play the game.
When you try too hard you are in a bit of a rush rather than slowing down and winning parts of the game.
If you string together small wins, all of a sudden you win a session, then you win the day and maybe another day, but it starts with focusing on the moment.
You don’t bowl Test teams out for 36 too often, and we were just in a little bit of a hurry (in Melbourne) at the start and let them take control.
It was more through our mistakes than their brilliance – they batted and bowled well enough, but if we had eliminated our errors we would have been in a different position.
Now we are in Sydney and Davey (Warner) is back. He brings so much with him.
I love having him around, he brings a different intensity, a different energy and he breeds confidence.
He is one of those blokes as I’ve always said that makes others walk taller.
He has made an immediate impact on our group with his energy, his intensity … we feed off that.
Sean Abbott is another one who joined us after being locked out, another player who has performed extremely well in domestic cricket and deserves his opportunity.
To have younger guys like him and Will Pucovski around is great.
They are so excited it becomes infectious for the rest us, you can feed off that younger generation and those two certainly bring that.
Sean’s got some very good skills with the ball, his batting’s improved, and he has got a first-class hundred this year.
When you watch Puc bat in the nets you just think “wow”.
He is a super player so we are excited to have him back in the mix and looking forward to what the future holds for him.
The SCG Test is an opportunity and one we’re looking forward to.
It’s great that there will be crowds, even limited numbers – it’s great to be in the middle of an intense series and we are just so lucky to be playing cricket at all.
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