India has won the Gavaskar-Border trophy by 2-1 after winning the last test match in Dharamshala against Australia. However, this series has also left some bitter moments as Kohli asserted that Australian cricketers are not his friends now.
There was much uproar when Virat Kohli didn’t play in the last test match due to his injury but Australian media was skeptic of this decision and raised questions as to how a captain could miss a match which would decide the winner of the series.
Former Australian cricketer Brad Hodge created controversy by saying that Kohli might not have played the last test match as he wanted to keep himself ready for the upcoming IPL. Hodge is the coach of IPL Team, Gujarat Lions, and here’s what he said,
“You would think that your captain would get out there and get amongst the fight and get in there. 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. 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.”
This was bound to get slammed by Virat’s fans including the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan and cricketer Gautam Gambhir.
Amitabh Bachchan tweeted, “Brad Hodge says ‘Virat skipped 4th to play IPL’ .. RUBBISH ! he did it to tell you that his team can wallop you even without him !”
T 2477 – Brad Hodge says 'Virat skipped 4th to play IPL' .. RUBBISH ! he did it to tell you that his team can wallop you even without him ! pic.twitter.com/FVxFpYcgEq
— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) March 27, 2017
Amitabh has been very vocal when it comes to supporting Indian players. Cricketer Gautam Gambhir too supported Kohli as he told CNN,
“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. 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.”
Hopefully, Brad Hodge has learnt his lesson! What do you say? Share your views in the comments section below.