India captain Virat Kohli on Saturday broke his silence on Farokh Engineer’s claim that she was served tea by one of the selectors during the World Cup, saying his actress wife Anushka Sharma was a “soft target.”
The 81-year-old Engineer, a former India wicketkeeper, recently ridiculed the credentials of the five-member selection panel, led by M. S. K. Prasad and comprising Sarandeep Singh, Jatin Paranjpe, Gagan Khoda and Devang Gandhi. He claimed he saw one of them serve tea to Sharma during the World Cup in England.
Read | Never meant to demean Anushka - Engineer
The 31-year-old captain was surprised by the allegations and said dragging her name was not right. “She came for one World Cup game against Sri Lanka and the family box and the selector box was different, and there was no selector in that box. She came with two friends. As I said, she is known, she’s been successful at a very high level so when people take her name, it gets noticed,” Kohli told India Today .
“You want to mention something about the selectors do that, but why join her name with it.”
‘Need to speak up’
“When the lies are spoken so much all around, they start becoming truths. So you need to speak up at some stage and that’s exactly what happened recently.”
Sharma has often been accused of getting preferential treatment in the Indian cricket fraternity but Kohli rubbished all the allegations, saying his wife’s value system would never allow her to do anything wrong. “So much has been said about her and so much comes out about her. The value system that she has and her beliefs and the nature she has, it won’t allow her to go against rules and protocols.
“So I don’t know why people have wanted to sensationalise stories by taking her name because she’s a soft target. We both had been ignoring it for a while,” Kohli said.
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