Virat Kohli is known for pulling out pranks and creating light-hearted moments in the dressing room but as a teenager he himself became a victim of a leg-pulling. The former Indian captain’s Delhi teammate Pradeep Sangwan recently recalled a hilarious incident involving Kohli.
While playing for the U-17 Delhi team, Kohli was facing a poor run of form and failed to score big runs in 2-3 matches. And Kohli’s dismal form gave Sangwan and one of the coaches an opportunity to pull a prank on the teenage batter.
“We were playing in a U17 match in Punjab. He (Kohli) hadn’t been scoring big in the past 2-3 innings. We had a coach named Ajit Chaudhary who used to call him ‘Cheeku’. Virat was the main player of our team, and Ajit sir funnily suggested, ‘let’s tell him he will not play in the next match. We all joined in on the prank,” Sangwan recalled during an interview with News24.
According to the plan, Virat Kohli’s name wasn’t announced in the team meeting. He was of course shocked. “He went to his room and started crying,” claimed Sangwan.
Kohli then called up the coach and said that he has scored scored a 200 and a 250 that season and deserves to be in the team. “He got so emotional he even phone-called Rajkumar sir (Virat’s childhood coach),” Sangwan added.
Later, Virat Kohli approached Sangwan and wanted to know about his drawbacks. The Haryana-born pacer eventually had to spill the beans as he got to know that Kohli had not been able to sleep because of the prank.
Virat Kohli is one of India’s best batsman in all formats of the game. King Kohli will not be playing the five-match T20I series against South Africa. Captain Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jasprit Bumrah are among the big names rested for the series after a hectic IPL season. KL Rahul was supposed to be the stand-in skipper but he suffered a groin injury. The team will now be led by Rishabh Pant.
Kohli has been going through a rough patch in international cricket. His last century was in 2019 during India’s pink-ball Test match against Bangladesh at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. The then India skipper had scored 136 runs off 194 balls as the hosts managed to win the match by an innings and 46 runs.
In the 15th season of IPL, Kohli managed to score 341 runs for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in 16 matches. Kohli notched up just two half centuries in the IPL 2022 season.
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