Gavaskar Slams Kohli, Star Sports

An angry Sunil Gavaskar lashed out at Virat Kohli over his criticism of commentators, who had questioned his strike rate in T20 cricket.

Kohli came up with an angry response after smashing a 44-ball 70 against Gujarat Titans. 'You have done this, day in and day out. You have won games for your team. And I am not quite sure if you have not been in that situation yourself, to sit and speak about the game from a box,' Kohli said after the match.

Gavaskar was in no mood to let Kohli get away for speaking out against commentators, saying if his strike rate was low he deserves to be criticised.

'If you have a strike rate of 118, you come and face the first ball, and then you get out in the 14th or 15th over and your strike rate is 118 -- if you want applause for that, then that's a little bit different,' the batting great told Star Sports.

He also slammed official broadcasters Star Sports for repeatedly playing up Kohli's comments, which he said was 'belittling their own commentators'.

'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,' he said,

'That particular post-game interview has been shown on this channel earlier as well, right now, on this particular programme it has probably been shown half a dozen times.'

'I hope that Star Sports recognises that when that is being shown, asking where are the critics, the critics are the commentators. Your Star Sports commentators are the ones from whom the questions are being asked.'

'We have all played a bit of cricket, not a lot of cricket, but we speak about what we see. We don't necessarily have any likes and dislikes. Even if we have likes or dislikes, we actually speak on what's happening. So, I would be very disappointed if Star Sports show this once more because that will be questioning all us commentators.'

• IPL 2024