Steve Smith calls Virat Kohli’s DRS-gate accusation ‘Rubbish’

It was during the 21st over of Australia’s second innings in the Bangalore Test against India in this year, when Umesh Yadav had trapped Steve Smith in front, with a delivery that kept very low. After the umpire had raised his finger, Smith spoke to his partner Peter Handscomb and looked at the dressing room, to ask if he should go for the review.

The Australian skipper had come under a lot of criticism for that action and while India won the Bengaluru Test by 75-runs, things turned ugly off the field after skipper Virat Kohli stopped just short of calling them cheaters in the post-match press conference. Cricket boards of both the countries had come out in open support of their captains. 

In an interview with ESPN Cricinfo, Smith dismissed Kohli's DRS-gate claims and has called it "rubbish". "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," ESPNcricinfo quoted Smith as writing in his book, The Journey.

"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.”

In the morning session of the Day 3 at Dharamsala Test, Matthew Wade started the sledging in the 103rd over, when Ravindra Jadeja had moved away from the pitch at the non-striker's end and it forced umpire Ian Gould to intervene. Smith feels it was wrong to highlight only certain instance and not all such verbal battles going on the pitch.

"It was an example of the banter that took place on the field, but it gave a very one-sided view of what was happening. There would have been plenty of examples that could have been released of Indian players engaging with me and my team, such as when they were constantly in the ears of Matt Renshaw when he resumed his first innings in Pune having had to retire ill because of diarrhoea. Ian Gould asked Matthew and Ravindra to cut it out in Dharamsala and that was where it ended. So to rake it up in the way that it was benefited no-one," Smith wrote in his book.