As an Indian batting legend and a commentator in IPL, Sunil Gavaskar holds a lot of respect and his words carry a lot of weight. Gavaskar is not bothered about criticism on his spoken words and he ensured he uses the right choices of words when he criticises a player becuase he too has been in the same shoes decades ago. But he never shies away from speaking his mind. Even if he is commentating on a modern-day great like Virat Kohli, he will not stop himself from criticising the batter if he has put a foot wrong in an innings or during a tournamen or if there is any flaw in his game.
Gavaskar and some other commentators working in the league have come down heavily in IPL over Kohli's strike rate in the competition. The RCB batter has a tendency of starting slowly and then building on the start. This is not T20 batting of today and many critics have spoken about the same.
When Kohli helped RCB beta SRH with the same approach, he did not stop himself from speaking his mind and said that it is easy to sit in the (commentators) box and speak but what he aims for is winning the game for his team.
"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. And there's a reason why you do it for 15 years - because you've done this day in [and] day out; you've won games for your teams. I am not quite sure if you've been in that situation yourself to sit and speak about the game from a box. I don't really think it's the same thing [as playing out there]. So for me, it's just about doing my job. People can talk about their own ideas and assumptions of the game, but those who have done it day in [and] day out know what's happening, and it's kind of a muscle memory for me now," said Kohli.
Gavaskar definitely heard the comments and was disappointed by the answer. He hit back at Kohli ahead of the RCB vs GT clash in Bengaluru, saying that if cricketers are not bothered about the outside noise then why do they bother reacting to it.
"Commentators questioned only when his strike-rate was 118,” Gavaskar said ahead of RCB’s second match against GT in IPL 2024 on Saturday evening. “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.”
“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,” he added.
