Australian Test captain Tim Paine has recently shared that losing out on a place in the inaugural edition of the World Test Championship final was a “bitter pill to swallow”. Notably, they failed to qualify due to slow over-rate. He has stated that he had difficulty while watching the inaugural WTC final in Southampton between New Zealand and India.

However, Australia didn’t qualify after the deduction of four points from their Championship points tally in the Boxing Day Test against India in Melbourne last year as well. Meanwhile, the experienced batsman said that he wouldn’t hide his disappointment.

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“I didn’t watch too much of it. I watched the last day. I turned it on excited to watch the first day. I thought I was excited, and then got a bit dirty and didn’t watch it,” Paine was quoted as saying by The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday. “Bitterly disappointed that we weren’t there because of over rates. We’ve always got things in place to try to help out with that, but unfortunately it doesn’t always work.”

“We were behind on our overs, and that’s what it is. My thing is just with the consistency. I haven’t played in too many days where the full overs have been bowled, and to my knowledge there hasn’t been other teams docked points. Yeah, it’s a bitter pill to swallow when you’re the only team that’s been docked points and you see it happen Test match after Test match, after Test match,” Tim Paine concluded.

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However, Australia’s first assignment in the second edition of the World Test Championship will be the much-awaited Ashes Test against England in Brisbane later this year as well. Meanwhile, veteran Australian players like Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc are preparing for the Ashes. While Smith has already given the hint that he would give up the T20 World cup for the Ashes series whereas Starc focussed on the upcoming series to prepare himself as well.