Team India talisman Virat Kohli made a sensational revelation about an ugly episode he was involved in with tearaway Australian Mitchell Johnson Down Under during the initial part of his career in 2014.
Remembering the incident, Virat Kohli stated that he was hit on the head by a Mitchell Johnson bouncer during the Adelaide Test in 2014, leaving him rattled.
Nonetheless, he decided to fight on and eventually went on to dominate not just Mitchell Johnson but other Australian bowlers as well to end the tour with over 600 runs in four Test matches.
This made him just the second Indian batter after Rahul Dravid to breach the 600-run mark in a Test series in Australia.
“First Test, first ball of the tour. He (Johnson) hit me on the head, and I was in disbelief. I had been visualizing how I would play in this series for the past 60 days. And suddenly, there was a complete change of plans. It was a heavy blow. My vision started dropping, I had swelling. There were two deliveries remaining before lunch, that I played,” the 35-year-old recalled during a promotional event for the sportswear brand Puma.
“There were two options: fight or flight. Naturally, my reaction was like, ‘isne mere ko maari kaise sar pe ball (how could he hit me on the head)? I was like, ‘main isko itna maarunga iss series me (I will hit him so much throughout this series). And that’s exactly how it happened,” Virat Kohli elaborated.
Recently, Virat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) teammate Glenn Maxwell made a shocking statement about the premier Team India batter, stressing that he doesn't want the South Asian nation's national selectors to pick him in the squad for the forthcoming T20 World Cup in the West Indies and the US.
He underlined that Virat Kohli is the most intense player he has seen in the game and that's why he doesn't want to face the star Indian cricketer in the International Cricket Council (ICC) tournament.
“Virat Kohli is the most clutch player I've ever played against. You see, his career just stands as the most amazing tournament rap sheet. I think the innings he played against us in Mohali in the 2016 T20 World Cup is still one of the best innings ever to have played against me and it changed the face of the whole game,” Glenn Maxwell said on a television show.
“He was hitting balls on a wicket that was inconsistent into different areas and his ability to change his hands position at the last moment and flick it almost like a table tennis bat; and time it into a gap or over the fences, something that’s almost unmatched around the world. And his awareness of what he needs to do to win the game is phenomenal. It’s been great to sort of play alongside him and train with him and watch him go about it, but I still have to play against him so I’m hoping India doesn’t pick him. It’d be great to not have to come up against him,” the explosive Australian batter added.
The T20 World Cup will take place in the Caribbean and the US in June and India's 15-men side will be picked by the national selectors led by Ajit Agarkar at the end of this month.
According to media outlet Cricbuzz, Virat Kohli is a certainty in the Rohit Sharma-led team, considering the Delhi-born cricketer's dazzling form in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) for his franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB).
With 319 runs in six matches, the 35-year-old leads the run charts in the 2024 IPL at present. During his splendid run in the elite competition, Virat Kohli has struck two fifties and a record-extending eighth hundred in the tournament.
He suffered a rare failure in the cash-rich league against the Mumbai Indians (MI) on Thursday as Jasprit Bumrah came up with a record-breaking display against Virat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB).
In the high-octane encounter between Mumbai Indians and the RCB at home, the Team India pace spearhead produced one of his best bowling displays, finishing with outstanding figures of 5/21 in his four overs to torment Faf du Plessis and his men after Hardik Pandya won the toss and chose to field first.
Right from the beginning, Jasprit Bumrah was on the button, troubling the 2024 IPL's leading run-scorer Virat Kohli as he choked him for runs. With runs hard to come by due to Jasprit Bumrah's immaculate line and length, the former RCB captain eventually got out for 3 off 9 balls as the Mumbai Indians star delivered a big blow to the visitors.
Earlier in the competition, Virat Kohli became the first player to score more than 7500 runs in the IPL. His run tally for RCB in the IPL now stands at 7582 runs.
In addition to that, the Delhi-born cricketer has made 424 runs for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the now-defunct Champions League T20 tournament.
Across the two events, Virat Kohli has scored 8006 runs for the RCB, making him the first player to compile that many runs for a single team in the T20 format.
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