When Virat first arrived at the international stage, his on-field persona caught immediate attention besides his precocious talent. He was ultra-competitive, brash and never walked away from a fight – be it with the opposition players or even the fans.
While Kohli’s on-field clashes with players are well documented, his skirmishes with the fans have also hit the headlines. One of the most memorable such incidents transpired during India’s tour of Australia in 2012 – Kohli’s first of the country as Test player.
During the Sydney Test, Kohli, reportedly irked by a set of abusive fans at the venue, responded with a ‘middle finger’ gesture and immediately, Australian media latched onto the incident, terming it ‘Fingergate’ a la the ‘Monkeygate’ scandal of 2008 when the legendary Harbhajan Singh was accused of referring to Australian allrounder Andrew Symonds as ‘monkey’ at the same venue.
It threatened to snowball into a big controversy and the image of an angry Kohli giving the finger being prominently displayed in Australian media and elsewhere. Naturally, the match referee Ranjan Madugalle summoned Kohli after and enquired him about what led to his gesture.
In an interview with Wisden, Kohli opened up on the controversy and recalled how he pleaded with Madugalle to not ban him.
“Yeah, the one thing I remember most is when I’d had enough of the Australian crowd at Sydney and I just decided to flick a finger at them. ‘I’m so cool’. The match referee called me to his room the next day and I’m like, ‘What’s wrong?’. He said, ‘What happened at the boundary yesterday?’. I said, ‘Nothing, it was a bit of banter’,” Kohli said.
“Then he threw the newspaper in front of me and there was this big image of me flicking on the front page and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, please don’t ban me!’,” he added.
Madugalle reportedly asked Kohli to admit to his guilt which he accepted and got away with 50 per cent deduction of his match fee. “I got away with that one. He was a nice guy, he understood I was young and these things happen,” Kohli said.
Kohli though doesn’t regret his actions and says he’s proud of staying true to his personality and not pretended to be someone else.
“I really laugh at a lot of the things I did when I was younger but I’m proud that I did not change my ways because I was always going to be who I am and not change for the world or for anyone else. I was pretty happy with who I was,” Kohli said.
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