DUBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday rejected a ball-tampering inve­s­tigation against Indian Test skipper Virat Kohli.

The ICC official while talking to DawnNews said the video of Kohli from the Rajkot Test was nine days old and thus no action can be taken against Virat Kohli.

Video footage had earlier emerged in which Indian captain Virat Kohli appeared to shine the cricket ball using saliva from his mouth during the first Test against England which resulted in a draw.

“For a level 1 or level 2 offence that is alleged to have been committed at any time or place, the report must be lodged with the match referee within five days of the commission of the alleged offence,” said the ICC official.

Agencies add: Earlier on Tuesday, Kohli was dragged into cricket’s ‘mint-gate’ controversy when footage emerged of him appearing to commit exactly the same offence that saw South Africa captain Faf du Plessis found guilty of ball-tampering.

On the day Du Plessis was controversially fined the whole of his match fee by the ICC for allegedly using the sugar from a mint to shine the ball, pictures were published of Kohli seemingly doing the same thing.

Cricket’s laws forbid any artificial substance being used to help shine the ball in an attempt to make it swing and the ICC have now clearly decided that the banned list includes sugary saliva after they came down heavily on Du Plessis.

And the can of worms opened by the ICC quickly spread to the India captain when a South African journalist uncovered footage of Kohli sucking on a small mint while polishing the ball during the first Test against England in Rajkot.

Neither umpires Kumar Dharmasena and Chris Gaffaney — who were on duty in Rajkot — nor match referee Ranjan Madugalle reported Kohli for any offence during the first Test while no accusations have come from the England camp.

Yet the officials in Hobart for the second Test between Australia and South Africa did not report Du Plessis either and it was only when television evidence was put forward by Fox Sports in Australia that the ICC intervened.

Now it is clear that the eyes of the cricketing world will be on Kohli when the third Test begins here in the Chandigarh suburb of Mohali on Saturday to see whether he risks committing what has now become an official offence again.

The pictures that emerged from Rajkot show Kohli rubbing his fingers in his mouth, a regular habit of his, while sucking on a mint. He then appears to shine one side of the ball.

Ball-tampering remains one of cricket’s most disproportionately emotive topics with it still being considered by authority as a heinous crime even though all legislation in the modern game is usually weighed in the batsman’s favour.

Meanwhile, Kohli shot up 10 slots to reach a career-high fourth position in the International Cricket Council (ICC) Player Rankings for Test Batsmen after playing a man of the match performance in the second Test against England which India won by 246 runs to take a 1-0 lead in the five-match series.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2016