Follow UsVirat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket on May 12, and since then, the rumour mill has been rife with people making several assumptions as to what could have made the star batter put a full stop to his flailing Test career.
Amongst those rumours, there were a few reports that suggested that some behind-the-scenes tensions with coach Gautam Gambhir might have provoked Kohli and Rohit Sharma, who retired from Tests a week before Kohli, to take the decision to retire from the longest format. However, in an interview with CNN News 18, Gambhir cleared the air and said that there’s nothing wrong between Kohli and him.
“I love that when it’s all for the TRP, it’s all for the views, it’s all for the promotions," Gambhir said on CNN-News18.
“When you’re playing for two different teams, everyone has a right to fight for their own team. Everyone has the right to fight for their own jersey and have the right to come back in a winning dressing room.
“So, for me, I think it remains very simple — when you’re playing for the same team, you try and get the results. If you’re playing against each other, you have all the right. Everything is fine between me and Virat. In fact, everything is fine between me and everyone in that.”
Gambhir also mentioned that it’s not like he hadn’t had some heated exchanges with players earlier in his career for India. In fact, Gambhir went ahead and had dinner with these players to ensure the matter is sorted then and there.
“I’ve had some really heated exchanges on the cricket field during a game of cricket, and we’ve had dinner,” Gambhir said.
“Both of us have had dinner after that once the game is over, because we know that whatever has happened on the cricket field remains on the cricket field. Once you cross that line, you cross that, and once the game is over, everything comes back to how it was.”
Gambhir will be next seen with the Indian side during the Test tour to England in June.