Cricket master and legend Sunil Gavaskar has called out his own country for allowing Virat Kohli to miss the remaining three Test matches in the Australia-India series to attend the birth of his first child while asking another player who is yet to meet his newborn daughter to serve as a net bowler.
Gavaskar, the record-setting opening batsman who missed the birth of his son, Rohan, while touring New Zealand in 1976, went on the offensive in a column for Sportstar following India’s defeat in the First Test in Adelaide.
He questioned why Kohli had left while fast bowler Thangarasu Natarajan remained separated from his family.
In his latest column in the weekly Sportstar that has triggered online debate, Gavaskar has chosen to speak about the proverbial elephant in the room. He has questioned the BCCI’s differing approach in considering the paternity leave request of Kohli and that of the pace bowler T Natarajan.
“Another player who will wonder about the rules, but, of course, can’t make any noise about it as he is a newcomer. It is T Natarajan. The left-arm yorker specialist who made an impressive debut in T20…had become a father for the first time as the IPL playoffs were going on,” Gavaskar wrote.
“He was taken to Australia directly from UAE and then looking at his brilliant performances, he was asked to stay on for the Test series but not as a part of the team but as a net bowler. Imagine that. A match-winner, albeit in another format, being asked to be a net bowler. He will thus return home only after the series ends in the third week of January and get to see his daughter for the first time then. And there is the captain going back after the first Test for the birth of his first child.”
Gavaskar has subtly hit out at the insidious cult of the superstar in Indian cricket. Predictably, outshouting the discussion that his comments spurred online, Kohli’s massive fanbase resorted to trolling, leading to Gavaskar and Natarajan trending on Indian Twitter. Fortunately or otherwise, Gavaskar isn’t on Twitter.
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