Full marks to Virat Kohli for ensuring calmness: Sunil Gavaskar

The recently concluded India – England Test at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai was a blockbuster of a game. India dominated the Brits in every aspect of the game and went home with the match and gained an incontestable 3-0 lead in the series, virtually regaining the Anthony De Mello trophy.

The match was all but over when the play resumed on the fifth day morning. At the end of Day four, England the batting side had only four wickets remaining and a deficit of 49 runs to cover before setting a target for India. This was obviously going to happen in the presence of Ravichandran Ashwin on a deteriorated pitch.

And, as it happened, the off-spinner bundled out the opposition inside the first half hour of the day and finished the match. But the matter did end on a dull note as a flared up Ashwin welcomed James Anderson to the crease in a heated manner. The off-spinner, clearly not happy with the words which Anderson spoke a night ago before the fifth day, shared a few words with the seamer before Virat Kohli and umpires intervened and got the game going.

While what happened was quite common these days, it was stunning to see skipper Kohli, the brash guy, step in and calm things down instead of raising the heat. Reacting later to the whole incident, the 28-year-old said that the off-spinner was not happy about what Anderson had told the media a day earlier and let him know about it without using any cuss awards.

“For the first time, I was trying to calm things down. Ashwin was not pleased over what he had told to the press. I had no clue about it and I didn’t know what to make of it and was laughing about it. So let me know about it. Not using any bad words, honestly.  I think he said he was pretty disappointed about what he said,” Kohli said after the game. Speaking about the incident, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar said that these incidents happened in matches and praised Kohli for the manner in which he cooled things down in the middle.

“Things do happen sometimes on the field and its good for the umpires to step in and always better if the captain can come and ensure calm prevails and I think that’s what Virat did and full marks for him for doing that,” Gavaskar told NDTV.