The recent on-field altercation between Indian batting legend Virat Kohli and Australian debutant Sam Konstas during the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) has touched off significant attention and debate within the cricketing community.
During the early stages of Australia's innings, prodigious Sam Konstas displayed an aggressive batting approach, notably pulling off aggressive shots against dangerous Jasprit Bumrah. Konstas's fearless play was on full display, giving India an headache. Tensions escalated when Kohli made shoulder-to-shoulder contact with Konstas at the end of the 10th over. Follwoing the shoulder bump, both players exchanged few words before parting ways.
As a result, International Cricket Council (ICC) fined Kohli 20% of his match fee and added a demerit point to his disciplinary frecord. The Australian media's portrayal of the incident further fueled the controversy. Now, former Indian head coach Ravi Shastri has criticized the Australian media's approach, describing it as "desperate".
"It's a little bit of desperation. You are three Test matches into the series, the scoreline is 1-1. The Border-Gavaskar trophy is still not yours. You want to win in Melbourne. I've been to Australia many times, the whole country comes behind the team. Not just the crowd, the media... everyone," Shastri said on Star Sports.
"I'm not surprised. That's why I said it's a sense of desperation. If Australia had already been 3-0 or 2-0 up, the headlines might have been different," he said.
"When you want to win badly... it not so often a country comes to Australia and win a series for 7-8 years. I know where it's coming from, it has been there for a period of time, someone had to be the target, and they got the opportunity with the physical incident yesterday."
"When the physical contact happened, they were like, 'this is our chance to get the fangs out, get the paintbrush out' and start doing all sort of things," he mentioned.