There has already been plenty of off-field chatter about the on-field chatter during the ongoing India-Australia Test series. Ever since India’s series-levelling win in Banaglore, heated words have been exchanged between players on the field and in press conferences, while former cricketers have weighed in on it off field.

Now, Australian great Ian Chappell has given his view on the matter, writing in his column for Channel Nine, and he has minced no words in his opinion and suggestions. Chappell has written about the rampant sledging in the ongoing series and how to deal with it before things aggravate. He also wrote about the DRS-gate controversy and on Australian media’s current favourite whipping boy, Virat Kohli. Here’s what he had to say:

On on-field chatter

Chappell’s suggestion to curb on-field bad blood is that officials should not allow any talking on the field. “It’s ridiculous to allow that much chatter to occur on the field,” Chappell wrote in his column. “But the administrators are foolish if they’re going to allow all this talking to continue on the field. If it does, there’s going to be trouble. It’s been allowed to escalate over the years, and nobody is stepping in to stop it. It’s going to cause a huge problem one day on the field. It already causes a bit of animosity from time to time, but from the evidence so far this series it will go beyond that at some stage.”

On Kohli’s emotions

Chappell called Virat Kohli “too emotional” for an international captain. “If I had one criticism of Indian captain Virat Kohli it’s that he’s a bit too emotional,” he wrote. “I’ve always thought as a captain that it’s best if you keep your display of emotions pretty even, but he doesn’t. He’s a very emotional guy. To say he’s worse than somebody else is unfair as everyone does it, and some blokes do it differently to Kohli.”

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However, he also went on to say that Australia themselves live in a glass house in this case. “But with all that said, I also don’t think the Australians are in any position to start throwing stones. They’re no choirboys themselves,” he added.

On Steve Smith and DRS-Gate

Chappell was willing to give Smith the benefit of the doubt over the DRS saga in Bengaluru. The Australian captain had looked towards the dressing room to get an indication of whether he should review his wicket during Australia’s second innings, after his batting partner Peter Handscomb gestured towards them. However, he had very strong words to say about the Decision Review System as a whole, calling it a “flawed system”.

“Cricketers will try and take advantage of any flawed system, so to me the DRS needs a hell of a lot of sorting out,” Chappell wrote. He went on to explain how DRS was introduced to the Channel Nine commentators and how it has not turned out to be what it was expected to.

“Channel Nine commentators were told years ago by the ICC that it’s there to get rid of the howlers and to get the correct decision,” he wrote. “Well, if that’s the case then it doesn’t work on either count because most of the referrals are 50-50 decisions which don’t cause a problem. And how can you say you’re going to get the correct decision when, if a team is out of referrals and somebody gets a bad decision, you can’t refer the damn thing? How can you possibly say that you’re getting correct decision?”