Indian cricket’s two all-time greats, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli In their opening game of the IPL 2023, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians faced off at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Sunday. IPL 2023 offers Kohli and Rohit a chance to reintegrate into India’s T20I strategy. Since the conclusion of the T20 World Cup in Australia in November, he hasn’t participated in a single T20 International match for India, and it’s believed that the team management has given up on both Rohit and Kohli in terms of T20 Internationals. It is likely that Kohli and Rohit’s T20I career is ended now that Hardik Pandya is leading India’s T20I squad. Even former coach Ravi Shastri thinks India might consider bringing in a young team for the T20 World Cup in 2018, with Rohit and Kohli being utilised in ODIs and Test matches instead.
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma following RCB’s 8-wicket rout of Mumbai Indians. (PTI)
Yet, the excitement around Kohli and Rohit is always present during the IPL, and Sunday night in Bangalore was no exception. The atmosphere was fantastic when the two were batting, despite Kohli having a considerably better performance than Rohit, who only managed to score a meager 82*. Rohit batted first of these two after RCB won the toss and invited MI to bat, however MI only scored one run in ten balls. After taking a single off the opening pitch, Rohit was unable to add any more runs before being caught by wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik.
On social media, a video featuring Kohli and Rohit that appeared out of nowhere has drawn a lot of attention. The stump microphone captured Kohli instructing bowler Mohammad Siraj to smack the batsman on the head after Rohit tucked the opening ball of the innings for a single.
While many in the crowd thought Kohli’s remarks were disrespectful, others insisted that there was more to them than what first appeared. In Hindi, the phrase “helmet pe maar” refers to throwing a bouncer, which is what might have happened in this situation. Second, it was unclear to whom Kohli was speaking when he asked who had gone on strike—Rohit or Ishan Kishan.
All of this was sufficient to cause a Twitter argument between fans.
A gap between Kohli and Rohit was widely reported to exist during the 2019 World Cup. Shikhar Dhawan confirmed this in a recent interview, stating that “ego conflicts and miscommunication” are unavoidable when players are at each other’s sides 220 days a year. Even former India fielding coach R Sridhar admitted in his book that Shastri once sat Kohli and Rohit down and made the point that they needed to be on the same page for Indian cricket to be healthy. This continued till the end of 2021, when Rohit was appointed the captain of all three forms after Kohli was fired as India’s ODI and Test captains.
According to reports, things are going well between the two Indian cricket batsmen. Rohit and Kohli are proud of one another’s accomplishments and the team’s success. After India defeated Australia in a T20I match at home in October of last year, they gathered for post-match interviews and were even spotted in hysterical celebrations. Since Chetan Sharma, a former BCCI selector, disclosed that no one preferred Kohli more than Rohit, the only positive outcome of his infamous sting was the amount of respect between the two.