Dhoni shuns Kohli-Dhawan episode; calls it imagination

There cannot be smoke without fire. The Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, however, would like us to believe that the smoke that emanated from the Indian dressing room in Adelaide was nothing but just a figment of the imagination of movie script writers.

He termed reports in Indian media as ‘stories’ that could be picked up by ‘Marvel and Warner Brothers’ to make a movie.

Dhoni, in his own clever way, tried to brush aside the whole alleged episode of bust up between his deputy Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan.

Even if we believe Dhoni that the whole ‘breaking news’ was about a non-existent incident, there obviously has to be discontentment in the camp. The journalist covering India’s tour could not have risked writing a fiction but were surely ‘fed from within’.

So is there a member of the Indian squad interested in feeding false news to the media and paint a dispirited picture of the team? That also doesn’t look too good for Dhoni and his boys.

Now, the Virat (means big in Hindi) bust up is believable, and Dhoni’s denial sounds more like a damage control work, because one of the protagonists of the so-called verbal fight is none other than Kohli, an aggressor par excellence.

And, this is not the first time, in his short six-year international career, that Kohli has been involved in a spat. He is known for his aggression, especially his wrongly placed hostility against his own teammates.

Ironically Kohli has had both — the televised and ‘reported’ — bust up with his senior Delhi state teammates. He went up to Gambhir, who made his first class debut seven years before Kohli, in a threatening manner during an IPL match.

And, last week, he reportedly clashed with Dhawan, who played for Delhi two years before Kohli debuted for the state team.

His clash with the fans and subsequent booing by the Wankhede crowd and showing middle finger to the Sydney Cricket Ground crowd in 2012 are part of the cricketing history.

There have been players who court controversies due to differences with the teammates in the Indian camp. It is well known that Virender Sehwag and Dhoni’s couldn’t see eye to eye during the 2011-12 tour of Australia.

Navjot Singh Sidhu mysteriously flew back to India even before the first Test of India’s 1996 tour of England.

The incident that led to a controversy between Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev public is also well documented. There have been more recent verbal exchanges between Indian cricketers on the pitch — Ravindra Jadeja and Suresh Raina clashing in Sri Lanka and S. Sreesanth publicly crying after being slapped by his Indian teammate Harbhajan Singh.

But none have had series of incidents like Kohli has had in a short span.

Hopefully young Kohli keeps learning with each incident that he gets embroiled in. He is a key figure for India’s future but needs to harness his aggression, at least with his own teammates.

sunilvaidya@khaleejtimes.com