Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar on Saturday launched a scathing attack against Star Sports, for whom he has been working as a cricket expert during the phase of the ongoing IPL 2024 season, for repeatedly playing Virat Kohli’s explosive interview from last week where the former Royal Challengers Bengaluru captain lashed out at his critics over his strike rate.
Kohli‘s strike rate against spinners has become a contentious issue as Indian cricketers gear up for the T20 World Cup. The criticism from fans and experts has been relentless, with former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar even going as far as excluding Kohli from his preferred India squad for the T20 World Cup, sparking further debate and speculation.
However, Kohli blasted his critics last week after carving out a brilliant 70 not out in just 44 balls against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad, where he smashed 61 runs against spinners at a strike rate of 179, his third-best scoring rate against the variety in a single IPL innings. All the people who talk about strike rates and me not playing spin well are the ones who love talking about this stuff,” he said. “But for me, it’s just about winning the game for the team.”
On Saturday, ahead of the start of RCB‘s reverse fixture against GT, Star Sports repeatedly played Kohli’s interview from the previous match, and a frustrated Gavaskar lashed out at the broadcasters, saying that in doing so, they were criticising their own commentary team.
“That particular post-game interview has been shown on this channel earlier as well, right now, on this particular programme it has probably been shown half a dozen times,” he said. “I hope that Star Sports recognises that when that is being shown, asking where are the critics, the critics are the commentators. Your Star Sports commentators are the ones from whom the questions are being asked.”
The legendary batter then went on to defend his own criticism of Kohli saying that went the comments were made his strike rate against spinners were lower than his present number. He further added that commentators have no personal agendas against players and that what they do is all part of the job.
“If you have a strike rate of 118, you come and face the first ball, and then you get out in the 14th or 15th over and your strike rate is 118 – if you want applause for that, then that’s a little bit different,” he said. “But for Star Sports to show the person belittling their own commentators, I’m not sure that’s a great thing. So I think Star Sports needs to understand that they have shown it enough times, everyone’s got the message.
“We’ve all played a bit of cricket, not a lot of cricket, but we speak about what we see. We don’t necessarily have any likes and dislikes. Even if we have likes or dislikes, we actually speak on what’s happening. So, I would be very disappointed if Star Sports show this once more because that will be questioning all us commentators.”