Some recent reports were doing the rounds that a number of senior cricketers, including Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, and Ravichandran Ashwin, had complained about Virat Kohli's attitude to BCCI secretary Jay Shah following the World Test Championship (WTC) final. While a BCCI official clarified about the same, Ashwin has broken silence on the rumours as well.

The Indian off-spinner has rubbished all such claims and called the news fake. Ashwin wrote on one of his Instagram stories, "I am searching for the handle 'fake news', it used to be super fun for gossip. Oh Yaaaa!! Thank you guys." In his following story, he added, "Found them: I just heard they renamed themselves and are now called IANS and some others take quotes from them too. Super fun," Ashwin wrote. The news report had suggested that Ashwin 'wasn't happy' with Kohli because as he had questioned the Indian team's lack of intent in the World Test Championship final against New Zealand in Southampton in June this year.

BCCI treasurer Arun Dhumal made a similar statement recently, where he mentioned, "The media must stop writing this rubbish. Let me say this on the record that no Indian cricketer has made any complaint to the BCCI - written or verbal. This kind of reporting harms Indian cricket more than anything else. We can understand if senior journalists - who have followed the game for a very long time and tracked it so devotedly - believe the Indian team should do this or do that. That's an opinion and we respect that. But to concoct tales and say this person said this or that person said, without substantiating it, is not done."