Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s Virat Kohli during an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 T20 cricket match between Gujarat Titans and Royal Challengers Bengaluru, at the Narendra Modi Stadium, in Ahmedabad. (PTI)
Virat Kohli vs Sunil Gavaskar: Another player-pundit World War of Worlds expected to resume at World T20
Earlier this week, Virat Kohli questioned the credentials of those calling the game and hinted that they, unlike him, didn’t have the first-hand experience of being in a tight T20 situation. This was after the commentators – an eclectic group of game’s greats and internationals of repute – had been critical about his strike rate and his skills to take on the spinners.
“It is about winning the game for the team. And there is a reason you have done this for 15 years … You have done this, day in and day out. You have won games for your team. And I am not quite sure, if you have not been in that situation yourself, to sit and speak about the game from a box,” Kohli had said. Here the ‘you’ alternately meant ‘I’ and the ‘commentators’. Kohli didn’t take names but it was easy to guess who he was targeting.
On Saturday evening, the box reacted. Indian great Sunil Gavaskar lashed out at the broadcaster Star Sports for airing clips of Kohli’s comments repeatedly. Gavaskar, in the pre-match show before RCB vs GT, said: “All these guys talk about, ‘oh we don’t care about outside noise’. Accha! Then why are you replying to any outside noise or whatever it is. 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… 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 need to realise you have shown it enough times, everybody’s got the message. I would be very disappointed if you show it once more.” (READ MORE)
