Virat Kohli injured his right shoulder while fielding in Australia’s first innings during the Ranchi Test. (Source: PTI)
Veteran Indian opener Gautam Gambhir has come out in support of his national and state (Delhi) teammate Virat Kohli and said that a player like Kohli who is playing for the country and captaining it, would not want to miss an international match for any other tournament.
“That’s absolutely not valid. I feel that someone who’s playing for their country and captaining it would never want to miss a Test match and would definitely want to play for India more than any other tournament. That’s always been the case,” Gambhir told News18.
“Knowing Virat he would have never done that and these people, look if you want to be in the headline you can say anything you want and it’s just about making a headline or trying to get your name in the press by making such statements.If you don’t know the extent of the injury you should not be talking about it.”, he added.
Kohli, smashed four double hundreds in four consecutive series, was unable to convert the starts he got in the series against Australia. The 28-year old batsman was involved in a DRS controversy with his counterpart Steve Smith in the second test at Bangalore Test.
“You should stop targeting one or two individuals, in a team sport there’s no point targeting one or two individuals, you should talk about the cricket,” Gambhir said.
“Taking someone individually or blaming someone individually or personally is something which should not work … it’s very immature.”
Earlier, Hodge had questioned Kohli’s ethics and went on to say that the Royal Challengers Bangalore captain is more keen of playing the IPL rather than trying to win the series against Australia.
“You would think that your captain would get out there and get amongst the fight and get in there,” Hodge said. “You’d hope as a sportsman that he’s seriously injured.
“Because if you miss one game of Test match cricket and you’re fronting up the next week for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) versus whoever … you’d be pretty dirty if he didn’t front up to a Test match and try to win a valuable series against Australia.
“It’s happened before,” Hodge said. “Not just Virat but there’s many players that have come up to IPL time and … look, we know it’s a cash-rich tournament, there’s some money up for grabs.
“There are certain players that will limp in, to IPL time, to make sure they get there and perform well.”
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