This time, rather than because of his amazing form, Virat Kohli has been the talk of the town and has taken centre stage due to his poor strike rate. Despite being in excellent form with RCB, the explosive hitter has received backlash and harsh criticism for his slow strike rate since the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 began.
But Virat Kohli responded to his detractors by playing a knock of 70 in just 44 balls against the Gujarat Titans, dominating the spinners with a strike rate of 179,
Sunil Gavaskar, former Indian cricket team captain launched a never-heard-before attack on Kohli after his comments on his critics. It all started as IPL's official broadcasters showed an interview where Kohli blasted former players and experts who "sit and talk about the game in the box". Kohli had 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.”
Responding to Kohli's comment, Gavaskar said that Kohli should not bother to respond on 'outside noise' if they don't care about it.
"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," Gavaskar said on Star Sports.
Gavaskar also launched a scathing attack on Star Sports for repeatedly showing the clip of his comment on the channel.
"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.
"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", Gavaskar concluded.