Former Indian cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar roundly slammed the International Cricket Council and the match officials of the second India-Australia Test in Bengaluru for not taking action against Steve Smith’s infamous “brain-fade” on the fourth day.
The International Cricket Council on Wednesday had decided that they would take no action against Steve Smith or Virat Kohli after tumultuous Test saw Kohli accuse his Australian counterpart of not playing within the spirit of the game.
In a panel discussion with NDTV, Gavaskar expressed his anger at the decision. “You and I know what exactly the match referee should have done. It appears that he hasn’t.“
He continued, in a similar vein, “Hopefully, this is something that will be above board with all countries. It can’t be that some countries get favourable treatment and some don’t. Tomorrow, for example, if an Indian player does something similar, looking up at the dressing room, he also should not be pulled up at all.”
“I would actually love to see Virat Kohli, if he is given out [in the third Test]...and he looks at the Indian dressing room, get some sort of feedback from them,” said Gavaskar. “Yes or no, I don’t know what signal they decide upon. Let’s see what the match referee and the ICC decides then.”
In a thrilling last day, Australian captain Steven Smith appeared to look towards his dressing room in an attempt to get an indication of whether he should review the leg-before-wicket decision he received. His Indian counterpart immediately reacted and later slammed Smith for his actions in the post-match press conference, disgregarding Smith’s assertion that it was just a “brain fade”.