{"id":10445,"date":"2020-12-16T11:06:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T12:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=10445"},"modified":"2020-12-17T00:01:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T00:01:52","slug":"why-kohli-defended-smith-from-tampering-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=10445","title":{"rendered":"Why Kohli defended Smith from tampering abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indian captain Virat Kohli<\/a> has opened up on why he chose to silence his team's fans who were booing Steve Smith<\/a> during the 2019 World Cup.<\/p>\n

In a candid interview where two of the world's most dominant batsmen asked each other a series of questions ahead of the first Test this summer<\/a>, Smith asked Kohli why he stood up for him in the midst of a heated contest, revealing that he sent Kohli a text thanking him after the match.<\/p>\n

Kohli explained that he felt the Aussie star had already paid the price for his actions in Cape Town and did not need to be punished further by a vociferous Indian crowd.<\/p>\n

"Things happen on the field and you have your moments against opposition you play… to me there was an incident that happened and you guys realised what had happened, you came back after a long time after going through everything you had to," Kohli explained.<\/p>\n

"I feel in life nothing can be that permanent that you carry that for life. People make mistakes and they learn from it.<\/p>\n

\"Virat<\/p>\n

"It's not fair to target an individual personally, that's what I felt at that moment and I asked them not to boo you. It was just instinctive.<\/p>\n

"As much as you play against each other there's a human side as well. There's always instances you're going to keep meeting as individuals.<\/p>\n

"You're competitive on the field but you don't want it to be nasty."<\/p>\n

The pair also recalled their first meeting, where Kohli remembers Smith being touted as a leg-spin prospect and the "next Shane Warne"<\/p>\n

"I remember you at the academy, going through your leg-spin action and everyone was like 'this guy is the new Shane Warne'," Kohli said.<\/p>\n

"Now 10 years later you average 60 in Test cricket."<\/p>\n

Newsletter plug: For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter <\/em><\/strong>by clicking here<\/em><\/strong><\/a>!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indian captain Virat Kohli has opened up on why he chose to silence his team's fans who were booing Steve Smith during the 2019 World […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10445"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10447,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445\/revisions\/10447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}