Cricket is often a matter of opinion, but, sometimes what is said on air can be misconstrued.
That was certainly the case during an IPL match in April 2017, when Kieron Pollard, the West Indies and Mumbai Indians all-rounder, took exception to comments made by commentator Sanjay Manjrekar during a match between Mumbai and the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Pollard had helped Mumbai chase down the KKR target of 178/7, scoring 17 off 17 balls. Manjrekar, though, opined on air that Pollard did not have the ability to play up the order because he lacked the brains to do so. He also accused Pollard of leaving too much work for the rest of the batting order to do so.
When Pollard heard what Manjrekar had said, he took grave offence, and was not slow to respond on social media, accusing him of negativity and verbal diarrhoea.
Pollard’s West Indian teammate Tino Best leapt to his defence. Former England player Kevin Pietersen, who was also commenting on the IPL was also dragged into the controversy.
This was not the first time that Pollard had found himself making IPL headlines for reasons other than performance with bat and ball.
Two years earlier, in a match against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, he had decided to try and rile up another international teammate, Chris Gayle, when he came out to bat.
Gayle was not amused. The two umpires, Richard Illingworth and Vineet Kulkarni, were forced to intervene. They asked Pollard to keep his views to himself. Pollard responded by producing some duct tape out of his pocket, and sticking it over his own mouth.
The only time he moved it was to talk to a teammate and then he stuck it back on afterwards.
On that occasion, players and fans alike, saw the funny side of it. However, he drew some criticism from the cricketing fraternity.
Manjrekar, for his part, has a history of upsetting big-name players. He described Ravindra Jadeja as a bits-and-pieces player ahead of the 2019 World Cup. And during the Australian tour of 2011/12, he said that the Indian selectors should pick Virat Kohli to prove to themselves that he did not belong at that level.
Then, in 2020, when Hardik Pandya was recovering from back surgery and was unable to bowl much, Manjrekar said Pandya was not good enough to feature in the ODIs and T20Is against Australia as a specialist batter alone.
Pandya played all three ODIs and T20Is, made two scores of over 90 in the ODI series, and was named Player of the T20I series.