After the seven-wicket defeat against South Africa in the three-match Test series decider on Friday at Newlands in Cape Town, Indian skipper Virat Kohli shared his take on the much-talked-about stump mic controversy.
Notably, on Day 3, Kohli and his teammates expressed their disappointment after an LBW decision involving Proteas captain Dean Elgar was overturned by the DRS. Following the controversial DRS reprieve, the likes of Kohli, Ravichandran Ashwin and KL Rahul walked up to the stump mic and expressed their frustrations.
The Indian players went on to accuse the home broadcasters – Supersport – of tampering with the ball-tracking technology and ruling against the visitors. Kohli, however, defended his teammates’ act, stating people don’t understand the actual reason that triggers such outbursts.
“I have no comment to make on either. We understood what happened on the field, and people on the outside don’t know exact details of what goes on on the field,” said Kohli in the post-match press conference.
The 33-year-old mentioned if the tourists had taken few wickets after that incident, the whole episode would be addressed as a game-changing moment. He also admitted that they failed to apply enough pressure on the hosts for a longer period of time, which led to the defeat.
“For me to try and justify what we did and say we got carried away if we had gotten 3 wickets there, that would probably have been the moment that changed the game. The reality of the situation is we didn’t apply enough pressure on them for longer periods of time throughout the course of the Test match, and hence we lost the game.”
“That one moment seems very nice and exciting to make a controversy out of which obviously I am not interested in. It was just a moment that passed, we moved on from it and kept trying to pick wickets,” explained Kohli.
