Indian cricket icon Sunil Gavaskar delivered a harsh assessment of Virat Kohli for his backlash against cricket analysts and commentators who had expressed apprehensions about his scoring rate before India’s T20 World Cup squad was revealed.
Gavaskar, an expert commentator for Star Sports, also condemned the broadcaster for airing Kohli’s rant clip multiple times.
“No, not really. The individuals discussing strike rates and my performance against spin are the ones bringing up these matters.”
“For me, it’s about winning the games for the team and there’s a reason why you’ve done it for 15 years, you’ve done this day in and day out, you’ve won games for your teams, I’m not quite sure that if you haven’t been in that situation yourself, to sit and talk about the game in the box.”
“For me, people can talk about their assumptions day in and day out, but those who have done day in and day out, they know what’s happening and it’s a kind of muscle memory for me now,” Kohli said.
Gavaskar saw these remarks as a direct affront to the experience and insights of former cricketers now working as experts.
Sunil Gavaskar unleashes an uncommon assault on Virat Kohli
“Commentators questioned only when his strike rate was 118. I’m not too sure. I don’t watch too many matches, so I don’t know what the other commentators have said otherwise. But if you come and open and then have a strike of 118 when you get out in the 14th or the 15th over, I mean, if you want applause for that, that’s a little bit different. That’s different,” said Gavaskar on Star Sports.
He further mentioned that players of Kohli’s stature should abstain from reacting to ‘external distractions’ if they truly disregard them.
“All these individuals claim, ‘oh, we don’t pay attention to external opinions.’ Well, then why do you respond to any external commentary or similar matters? We all played a bit of cricket, not a lot of cricket. We don’t have agendas. We speak about what we see. We don’t necessarily have any likes and dislikes. Even if we have likes and dislikes, we actually speak on what is happening,” Gavaskar said.
“I hope Star Sports realises that when that clip is shown, questioning the critics, the critics are your own commentators. For you to show the person belittling your own commentators, I’m not sure that’s a great thing.”
“You should understand that you’ve demonstrated it repeatedly, and everyone has understood. I would be greatly disappointed if you display it once again.”
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