The two stalwarts of Indian cricket, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, came to face-to-face in their respective team’s first match of IPL 2023 when the Royal Challengers Bangalore hosted Mumbai Indians at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Sunday. For Kohli and Rohit, the IPL 2023 provides an opportunity to get back into India’s T20I scheme of things. They have not played a single T20I for India since the end of T20 World Cup in Australia in November and the belief is that that the team management has moved past both Rohit and Kohli as far as T20Is are concerned. With Hardik Pandya taking over captain of India’s T20I unit, it is likely that the T20I doors have been shut on Kohli and Rohit as many. Even former coach Ravi Shastri reckons India could be looking at brining together a young team for The T20I World Cup next year while Rohit and Kohli are used in ODIs and Tests.
Still, everytime the IPL comes around, the hype surrounding Kohli and Rohit is palpable, and Sunday evening in Bengaluru was no different. Although Kohli had a much better outing – scoring 82* as compared to Rohit’s sluggish knock, the atmosphere when both were batting was electric. Among the two, Rohit batted first as RCB won the toss and asked MI to bat, but could only muster 1 off 10 balls. Rohit took a single off the very first ball and could not get going in the remaining deliveries before finally edging to wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik.
However, a video involving Kohli and Rohit has emerged out of nowhere and created quite the buzz on social media. After Rohit tucked the first ball of the innings for a single, the stump mic caught Kohli telling the bowler Mohammed Siraj to hit the batter on the helmet. “Maar, helmet pe maar iske,” Kohli could be heard as saying.
— Main Dheet Hoon (@MainDheetHoon69) April 5, 2023
While many believe Kohli’s words were uncalled for, another section of the audience claimed there was more to it that what meets the ears. The term ‘helmet pe maar’ is a term in Hindi that usually means bowling a bouncer, which could have been the case here. Secondly, it was also not known as to whom Kohli was talking about – Rohit or Ishan Kishan – who came on strike.
All this was enough to trigger a showdown between fans on Twitter.
