Angry Sunil Gavaskar hits back at Virat Kohli: ‘Why reply if you don’t care about outside noise’

“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 before the IPL 2024 match between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Gujarat Titans.

RCB’s Virat Kohli in action during IPL cricket match between RCB and GT at Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday. (news photo by Nirmal Harindran)

“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,” said Gavaskar.

He also called out Star Sports, saying: “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.”