Sydney, Jan 5 Asked about Andrew McDonald's comments on India 'intimidating' Sam Konstas at the end of day one’s play in the Sydney Test, India head coach Gautam Gambhir hit back by saying that cricket is a "tough sport played by tough men" and that one can’t be that soft.
Konstas had been given send-off by Indian players, with captain Jasprit Bumrah staring at him after he took Usman Khawaja's wicket on the last ball of day one’s play. Australia head coach McDonald had said after day two that he had to check on Konstas' welfare after the intimidating episode.
But speaking after India lost by six wickets to lose the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 3-1, Gambhir shrugged aside McDonald’s concerns. "It's a tough sport played by tough men. You can't be that soft. As simple as it can get. I don't think there was anything intimidating about it."
"He had no right to be talking to Jasprit Bumrah when Usman Khawaja was taking time. He had no right. He had no business to be involved with Jasprit Bumrah, that was a job for the umpire."
"I think whatever has happened is history. Whatever happened, happened. It is a tough sport played by tough men and these things happen. I don't think we need to make a big issue out of it."
"It is not just incidents that have happened in this series. It has happened in the past as well. A lot of Australian players in the past have done it as well. We keep making a big deal out of these things," said Gambhir in the post-match press conference.
At the same time, Gambhir felt Konstas has attributes in him to have a long career playing Test cricket for Australia. "That's why he's playing Test cricket. Obviously Test cricket is all about improving every day and sometimes you can't just go out there and keep smashing from ball one.”
"You've got to respect red-ball cricket as well. Hopefully he learns from these experiences. When you're playing against a high-quality attack like India, this will be a great learning for him going forward."
Asked if India could have won the Sydney Test if Bumrah had been fit after back spasms kept him away from bowling in Australia’s chase of 162, Gambhir stated, “I don’t want to say that just because Bumrah wasn’t there we couldn’t get the results.”
“It would have been nice if he would have been there, but we still had five bowlers, and a good team is one which is not dependent on one individual. We didn’t get the result, as simple as it can get. We lost the series here.”
Quizzed about the extent of Bumrah's injury, Gambhir said there is no concrete update on the situation. "Not at the moment. Honestly, the medical team is working on him, so we will give you the right update at the right time."
Despite the series loss, Gambhir insisted there were tons of positives for India to take from Australia, especially the youngsters touring the country for the first time and pacer Mohammed Siraj.
"There are a lot of positives. In fact, there are not some positives; there are a lot of positives. There were lot of these boys who were on their first tour to Australia and you know it's tough to handle. I don't know (for) how many years there has been a five-Test series.
"Be it Yashasvi (Jaiswal), Nitish (Reddy), be it Washington Sundar, be it Akash Deep... all those guys. I don't want to mention about individuals but again, I think the attitude of Mohammed Siraj was outstanding.
"I haven't seen a lot of, I don't think so I remember a guy who has ran in every ball in spite of sometimes not being 100% fit and that what it means to him to play for the country and that's the kind of attitude we had. We wanted to keep fighting. We fought till the end.
"Obviously, you can talk about the numbers, Jasprit Bumrah had an outstanding series. Jaiswal's got runs. People have got runs in this series. But from the attitude point of view, I think Mohammed Siraj for me was absolutely fantastic," he concluded.
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