Steve Smith rubbishes Kohli’s claims of him cheating during the Bengaluru test match

Earlier in the year Steve Smith led a young Aussie squad to play a three test match series in India. After comprehensively beating India in the first test in Pune, Smith wanted to finish off the series in the next match at Bengaluru.

The Bengaluru test match was one of the best matches in recent memory as India won a thrilling contest which eventually paved their path to winning the series.

There was a major controversy that took place in the match, as Kohli had just stopped short of calling Smith a cheat in the post match press conference.

WATCH : MS Dhoni is constantly chatting with Kohli from behind the stumps!

Smith had been dismissed and was contemplating whether or not to call for the DRS. He then asked the dressing room if he could, which was against the rules of the game. Eventually he did not but that incident left a very bitter taste in Kohli’s mouth.

Now, Smith has explained the situation in his book in which he accepts that it was a mistake on his part but did not agree that he was cheat.

“It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised what a talking point it had become, fuelled by Kohli’s post-match claims that we’d called on off-field assistance twice earlier in the match to help our on-field deliberations,” Smith wrote in his book, The Journey as reported by Cricinfo.

“As far as I was concerned, we’d never tried to consult with the dressing room beforehand and although he said he’d brought those previous occasions to the notice of the umpires, I can say categorically that we were never spoken to by either those umpires or match referee Chris Broad about any such breaches in protocol.

“Virat has always been a player who’s thrived in the most intense of environments, and like me he loves a battle and I can only think it was his way of raising the temperature in the series in an attempt to get the best out of himself. The idea of getting messages from the sidelines for that purpose was not a tactic we as a team ever spoke about and … I can’t work out what he was referring to in his remarks.

“There was never anything further on the matter from the ICC and Virat never detailed the incidents he was referring to. And during the brief interactions we had – including at the captain’s briefing for the IPL as that tournament followed the series – he was friendly and it was as if any ill-feeling he may have had over the incident had disappeared. It was and still is all a big mystery to me.”