Former India Coach Ravi Shastri has thrown his Weight Behind Star Batter Virat Kohli who has Been Coping with Severe Criticism over his shoulder bump to Aussie Teenager Sam Konstas on Day one of the MCG Test

Former India coach Ravi Shastri has thrown his weight behind star batter Virat Kohli, who has been coping with severe criticism over his 'shoulder bump' to Aussie teenager Sam Konstas on day one of the MCG Test.

Though the ICC fined him 20 per cent of his match fees as punishment, with a few former cricketers calling it an escape, Shastri slammed the Australian media for being desperate to target Kohli.

At a time when debutant Konstas made the right noises with his impressive stroke play early on day one, Kohli jammed his shoulder into the youngster’s while crossing paths, leading to an altercation.

The umpires and even Usman Khawaja intervened and separated them.

The ICC noted Kohli’s action, later punishing him for breaching its code of conduct.

Speaking on the issue, Shastri came down hevaliy on the Australian media for acting too desperate to target Kohli, adding the current situation has forced them to do so.

Had they been leading 2-0 or even 3-0 leading into the MCG Test, the headlines would have been different, Shastri pointed out.

“It's a little bit of desperation. You are three Test matches into the series, the scoreline is 1-1.

The Border-Gavaskar trophy is still not yours.

You want to win in Melbourne.

I've been to Australia many times; the whole country comes behind the team.

Not just the crowd, the media everyone,” Shastri said while commentating on Star Sports on day two of the Boxing Day Test.

“I'm not surprised.

That's why I said it's a sense of desperation. If Australia had already been 3-0 or 2-0 up, the headlines might have been different,” he continued. 

‘Someone had to be the target’
Considering Australia has more to look forward to than just winning this BGT as they haven’t beaten India at home in the past two outings, they’d go out of their way to turn the tables around and end their losing streak, Shastri reckons.

The Australian media, he said, needed to target someone, and when this incident unfolded, they found their target and got after him.

"When you want to win badly it not so often a country comes to Australia and win a series for 7-8 years.

I know where it's coming from, it has been there for a period of time, someone had to be the target, and they got the opportunity with the physical incident yesterday.

“When the physical contact happened, they were like, ‘this is our chance to get the fangs out, get the paintbrush out’ and start doing all sort of things,” Shastri  said.

Ahead of the Boxing Day Test, Kohli had a confrontation with a local journalist over her breaching Kohli and his family’s privacy by clicking photos without their consent.

The Aussie media made quite a noise about it.