Australian Captain Steve Smith has once again opened up on the DRS controversy that enveloped the series between Australia and India in 2016. In his autobiography titled, “The Journey”, the captain questioned Virat Kohli’s change in behaviour during the Test series to the IPL. He also termed Kohli’s accusations as “rubbish”.
Smith also said, “It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised what a talking point it had become, fuelled by Kohli’s post-match claims that we’d called on off-field assistance twice earlier in the match to help our on-field deliberations. As far as I was concerned, we’d never tried to consult with the dressing room beforehand and although he said he’d brought those previous occasions to the notice of the umpires, I can say categorically that we were never spoken to by either those umpires or match referee Chris Broad about any such breaches in protocol.”
He said that the entire idea of getting messages from the management was not a tactic that the team spoke about. He also said that he didn’t even know what Kohli was referring to in his remarks. During the brief interactions that they had, including at the captain’s meet for the IPL, Kohli was friendly and did not have any sort of ill-feeling towards Smith.
“The idea of getting messages from the sidelines for that purpose was not a tactic we as a team ever spoke about and. I can’t work out what he was referring to in his remarks. There was never anything further on the matter from the ICC and Virat never detailed the incidents he was referring to. And during the brief interactions we had – including at the captain’s briefing for the IPL as that tournament followed the series – he was friendly and it was as if any ill-feeling he may have had over the incident had disappeared. It was and still is all a big mystery to me,” Smith said.
It will be interesting to see if the Indian captain responds to these remarks or chooses to stay mum over the topic. Kohli isn’t someone who lets such remarks daunt him and might just come out with something to say.
