India legend Sunil Gavaskar has criticised official IPL 2024 TV broadcasters Star Sport for repeatedly showing RCB batter 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 sensitive issue as Indian batsmen prepare for the T20 World Cup. The criticism from fans and experts has been persistent, with former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar even going so far as to exclude Kohli from his chosen India lineup for the T20 World Cup, creating more debate and conjecture.
However, after he scored 70 in 44 balls against Gujarat Titans some time back, where 61 of his runs came against spinners with a strike rate of 171, Virat Kohli blasted his critics and said: “All the people who talk about strike rates and me not playing spin well are the ones who love talking about this stuff. But for me, it’s just about winning the game for the team.”
On Saturday, ahead of RCB’s rematch against GT, Star Sports repeatedly played Kohli’s interview from the previous match, prompting a disgruntled Gavaskar to lash out at the broadcasters, claiming that they were attacking their own commentary team.
“That particular post-game interview has been shown on this channel earlier as well, right now, on this particular program it has probably been shown half a dozen times,” he said. “I hope that Star Sports recognizes 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,” Gavaskar said.
Not a great thing for Star Sports to show their commentators being belittled: Sunil Gavaskar
The great batsman then went on to defend his own criticism of Kohli, claiming that when the comments were made, his strike rate against spinners was lower than it is today. He also stated that analysts have no personal motivations against athletes and that whatever they do is part of their profession.
“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. 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,” Gavaskar concluded.
Virat Kohli made 42 runs in the return encounter between RCB and GT and regained his Orange Cap for most runs in IPL 2024.
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