Virat Kohli (Photo credit: Royal Challengers Bangalore)

Virat Kohli is brash, arrogant, typifies the modern youth and that can be a good or bad thing for Indian cricket depending on your upbringing and what friends and trends you have been following on social media platforms.

In the ongoing IPL 6 season, as Royal Challengers Bangalore captain, he was booed off at the Wankhede Stadium for not sportingly calling back a Mumbai Indians batsman run out by sheer misfortune.  You do not that when the stakes are high in the lucrative Twenty20 cricket league, and certainly not if have ambitions like Kohli.

And that is nobody’s business. But the way Kohli played victim and and his comments after the ‘hurt’ must be noted. He said, “IPL is not the end of the world. And they (Mumbai crowd) forget that the players they are booing for also play for their country.”

That struck a chord with some who seemed to find it strange that Kohli is vilified in his own country. Some bore in mind that the Wankhede crowd has been known for booing its own local hero Sachin Tendulkar. Does it apply to the country blanketly? No.

It was Kohli’s next line which should have countered his own country line.

It doesn’t work that way. You come to Bangalore and you see how Indian players are appreciated.”

Kohli is from Delhi, is playing for Bangalore and could well play for Mumbai next season, given the nature of the franchise-based teams in the format who bid and buy players every three years in an auction that is due next year.

So when did he become an authority on the Bangalore crowd’s ways.

One must understand the difference in the overlapping club-country affliction. Football clubs are an example, as pointed out in Firstpost.

It is no excuse to defend the crowd behaviour but they come to the ground, when they could have easily watched from the comforts of their homes, to watch their heroes in flesh and blood, and conduct themselves well to befit the god-like status that has got Kohli worked up himself in the past (think Australia).

It works both ways, something that Kohli must realise soon for his own benefit.

Related articles

• IPL 2013: Livid Virat Kohli criticises Wankhede crowd for jeering him (sports.ndtv.com)
• Virat Kohli launches charity foundation for underprivileged kids (icricketbuzz.com)
• Virat Kohli – Tyranny begets tyranny (alongtheseam.wordpress.com)