Virat Kohli was never in danger of missing a Test match for his shoulder bump on Sam Konstas because of a secret change to cricket’s disciplinary code after the Newlands scandal.
Match referee Andy Pycroft – coincidentally the same match referee who presided over the fateful Cape Town Test in 2018 – charged Kohli with a level-one offence for “inappropriate physical contact”, the most lenient grade of the International Cricket Council’s code of conduct and only punishable by a reprimand or a fine.
Virat Kohli (left) was fined 20 per cent of his match fee and given a demerit point for making physical contact with Australian debutant Sam Konstas.Credit: Getty Images
That option was only available to him because the code was subject to a raft of changes in the months after Newlands. At the time, the most-publicised tweaks were to impose heavier penalties for ball tampering, but the introduction of a lesser charge for physical contact took place without any fanfare. Previously, physical contact was an automatic level-two offence, which can be penalised with a ban.
Kohli, who Forbes magazine estimated in 2020 as earning $41.8 million, was docked 20 per cent of his match fee – about $5671 – and given one demerit point, the same penalty as that handed out to teammate Mohammed Siraj in Adelaide for giving Travis Head a verbal send-off.
The maximum penalty for a level-one offence is a warning and a fine of up to 50 per cent of a player’s match fee – placing Kohli’s sanction at the lower to middle range.
According to two sources with knowledge of discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, Kagiso Rabada’s brush with Steve Smith during the Port Elizabeth Test immediately before Newlands had been a catalyst.
Rabada was initially banned for two Test matches because his offence was added to three previous transgressions within two years. But numerous countries felt that incidents in which players made incidental contact were not worthy of bans.
There were also concerns that some teams might “weaponise” the code to bait players into getting suspended, given how certain offences were graded. While physical contact is forbidden in cricket, the degree of force and the context of the situation are both looked at closely.
While Rabada’s contact was described as “deliberate” by the ICC, Kohli was judged to have acted “negligently”, despite going out of his way to walk in Konstas’ line on the edge of the pitch – an area of the ground that is commonly accepted as belonging to the batter.
Under the old system, Kohli could have been suspended for his bump on Konstas, but since 2018 the heaviest penalty in a senior men’s international for making physical contact is a fine of 30 per cent of a player’s match fee.
In 2019, during a Twenty20 game against South Africa, Kohli was called before match referee Richie Richardson for making “avoidable shoulder contact with the bowler Beuran Hendricks” while taking a run. That offence resulted only in a reprimand.
More egregious than either the Kohli or Rabada incidents was an episode in the Delhi Test between India and Australia in 2008, when current India head coach Gautam Gambhir elbowed Shane Watson as he came down the pitch while scoring a run. Gambhir was banned for that incident, and the ban was upheld despite India’s appeal.
A widely held view among former internationals was that Kohli escaped lightly. Former Australia coach Darren Lehmann, now a pundit on the ABC, responded to news of the sanction with three laughing emojis in a post on X.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan said Kohli had been “very lucky”.
“You see Virat makes his way from a different lane, he’s got the same [penalty] as Mohammed Siraj got at Adelaide Oval – I think he’s got away with it a little bit there,” Vaughan said on Fox Cricket.
Mark Waugh said Kohli had overstepped by making physical contact.
“It’s not on. It doesn’t matter who you are – that sort of behaviour is not on,” Waugh said. “It’s extremely lucky. The penalty was very lenient, I thought, from Andy Pycroft, the match referee. He could easily have been deemed a level-two offence … and that would be a suspension. It should be at least 75 per cent [of his match fee].
“You just can’t make contact.”
Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley said physical contact on the field was “not a great look”, but did not agree that Kohli had been treated leniently.
“[It’s] not a great look. Physical contact on the cricket field is a complete no-no. It wasn’t great,” Hockley said on SEN. “Clearly Virat, in accepting the charge, has taken responsibility.
“I actually thought Sam [showed] maturity beyond his years, was very gracious and brushed it off. It highlights the intensity of the competition but also just how much is at stake in the series. But [the incident was] not a great look.”
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