Royal Challengers Bangalore and Lucknow Super Giants produced a low-scoring thriller on Monday. It ended in some ugly scenes when Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir got into a furious argument after RCB registered an 18-run win.
RCB cleaned out LSG for 108, defending a score of 126/9, to revenge their humiliation against the KL Rahul-led side in the first leg of the ongoing season. On Monday night, the game was overshadowed by a verbal spat between RCB batter Kohli and LSG coach Gambhir. Since then, a number of former cricketers and experts have shared their opinions on that heated exchange.
However, now Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar has also come up and said that the BCCI should suspend both Virat and Gambhir after that incident. Notably, both players faced a fine of 100 percent of their match fees. However, Gavaskar feels that a fine of 100 percent match fee is not the solution because players don’t care about it now.
In an interaction on Star Sports, he said, “You get 100 per cent fine but what difference does it make to today’s players. You will remember the story of Harbhajan and Sreesanth. Both were suspended. Something similar should have happened here. Money does not bother any player. But when suspension comes and it affects the performance of the team, then such incidents will not happen again.”
Virat also had a war of words with LSG pacer Naveen-ul-Haq twice during the game. Naveen has also been fined 50 percent of his match fee. Notably, this is not the first time that Virat and Gambhir have had this kind of clash. In 2013, when Gambhir was leading KKR and Virat was the captain of RCB, both were involved in such an incident.
Though, the heated altercation overshadowed the excitement of the game, RCB gained two important points after the win. They moved up to fifth place with 10 points. RCB will play their next game on Saturday against DC, while LSG will face CSK on Wednesday.