Member of India’s World Cup 2011 winning team Gautam Gambhir has come to the rescue of Indian skipper Virat Kohli over Brad Hodge‘s comments.
The former Aussie cricketer recently said that Kohli had skipped fourth Test against Australia to regain full fitness for the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) season.
“You’d hope as a sportsman that he’s seriously injured,” Hodge was quoted telling Fox Sports News’ Gameday Live.
“Because if you miss one game of Test match cricket and you’re fronting up the next week for RCB [Royal Challengers Bangalore] versus whoever … you’d be pretty dirty if he didn’t front up to a Test match and try and win a valuable series against Australia.”
Kohli injured his shoulder in the Ranchi Test in an attempt to prevent the ball from crossing the boundary line during the Australian first innings.
Now, Kohli’s Delhi team-mate Gautam Gambhir threw his weight behind him saying that there was no way Kohli could have done that.
“I feel someone who is playing for the country and captaining India would never want to miss a Test match and would definitely want to play for India more than any other tournament. That has always been the case and knowing Virat, he would have never done that,” the left-hander told CNN News 18.
Further, Gambhir slammed Hodge saying that such statements are given by individuals only to make headlines.
“Look if you just want to be in headlines you can say anything you would want to. It’s just about making a headline or trying to get your name in the press, you could make such statements as well. But if you don’t know the person, you don’t know the extent of the injury, you should not be talking about it,” Gambhir added.
