It's shameful that cricketers fail to show sportsman spirit in situations like these.
It's been almost a year that the 'voice of Indian cricket', Harsha Bhogle has been missing from the commentary box. While cricket aficionados are ruing the fact that the well-renowned commentator has to bear the brunt of unjust wishes of some senior Indian cricketers, there's no sign of change in Bhogle's fortune as he has not been called up by official broadcasters, Star Sports for the upcoming Test series against Australia.
The crux of the matter is that some stars of Indian team, mainly MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay felt that the Mumbaikar used to ask tricky questions during interviews while his commentary was not India centric during last year's World T20.
During the World T20 held in India last year, Bhogle was indirectly criticised by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan who tweeted, "With all due respects, it would be really worthy of an Indian commentator to speak more about our players than others all the time." Dhoni who is rarely active on Twitter, immediately retweeted the post and this proved to a major blow for Bhogle. His contract with Star Sports wasn't renewed as players reportedly made it clear to BCCI that they won't be interacting with Bhogle in front of the camera in future.
However, Bengali daily Sangbad Pratidin reported that before this incident, Kohli and Vijay had some differences with Bhogle which didn't help his cause.
Back in the year 2014, during the Australia-India Test series Down Under, Murali Vijay first reported against Bhogle. The opener got out for 53 in the first innings in Adelaide Test and immediately he was asked by Bhogle on camera whether he felt bad to not get a century on that wicket.
Vijay didn't say anything on the spot but unleashed his frustration in the dressing room. He told his teammates that Bhogle shouldn't have said what he said as he was not batting on a placid track in India. Within days, this news made it's way to the Indian commentary circuit.
Then during the 2016 Asia Cup in Bangladesh, Kohli got infuriated by a certain observation of Bhogle. During India's group stage match against Bangladesh, Bhogle had said that Kohli was playing more shots than what he was scoring. Kohli was so frustrated with his display (he got out for seven), that after hearing Bhogle's comments, he directly asked the commentator, "Why did you make such comments?"
Bhogle had a great relation with Kohli before this incident and he did try to calm down the Delhi lad by sending him messages on WhatsApp but that didn't help.
As things stand, it's not Bhogle who is suffering from his exclusion from the commentary panel. He is busy doing videos for a website which are getting enormous views on Facebook but fans across the globe are being deprived of world class analysis of the game.
Cricketers are expected to show sportsman spirit in these situations but like Bhogle pointed out once an interview, the current crop of players aren't like the Sachins, Souravs, Dravids and Laxmans who used to take criticism in a positive manner.
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 "Virat Kohli and Harsha Bhogle")
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