Virat Kohli was in the news on the first day of the Boxing Day Test match between Australia and India at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground. At the end of the 10th over of the Aussie innings, Kohli seemed to change his path and intentionally collided with the 19-year-old debutant, Sam Konstas.
Both of them then got into a heated verbal altercation. The Australian fans and the media tore apart Kohli after the incident with the fans in the ground booing him and the Australian newspapers labelling him as a ‘clown’ on their front page.
Now, after Australia had posted 474 runs on the board in their first innings, Kohli stitched together a partnership with Yashasvi Jaiswal and was consolidating the Indian innings. He was looking focused and disciplined, leaving balls outside the off stump. However, a mix-up at the fag end of the day’s play resulted in the run-out of Jaiswal. Soon after, Kohli lost his concentration and nicked one delivery from Scott Boland to Alex Carey.
Virat Kohli nicked a fifth stump delivery off Scott Boland
Australian fans were booing Kohli when he walked inside the tunnel after he was dismissed. It seemed like one of the fans said something offensive to Kohli, and he came back from inside the tunnel to have a go at the fan. The video of the incident has gone viral on social media.
Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Steve Smith scored his second century of this series, with his final score being 140 runs off 197 balls. Marnus Labuschagne had scored 72 runs, Usman Khawaja had scored 57, and the young Konstas scored a quickfire 60. Jaiswal batted well and was looking set to get a century.
However, he was dismissed for 82 runs. Rohit Sharma opened the innings but failed with the bat yet again and was dismissed for three runs. KL Rahul scored 24 runs, and Kohli scored 36 runs. India are 164/5 at the end of the day’s play.
