‘He was giving MS Dhoni tips on captaincy. Asked me ‘What’s going on with your batting?”: Kohli’s bizarre fan encounter

The 2014 tour of England was a forgettable campaign not just for Virat Kohli, but also for the entire Indian team. While Kohli made a below-par return with the bat, scoring only 134 runs in 10 innings without a single fifty, India lost lost the Test series 1-3.

A lot was said in the media about the Indian team, then led by MS Dhoni, and about Kohli’s place in the squad, leaving a gloomy atmosphere in the team even as they made a winning return in the white-ball leg. Amid this, the Indian side came across a fan on their flight back to home who was eager to pass in tips to both Kohli and Dhoni leaving the former furious, who then gave an epic reply to shut him.

Speaking on the latest episode of RCB Podcast season 2, Kohli recalled the incident happened after that 2014 England tour where a fan approached him while he was on the flight from Kochi to Delhi, asking him about his form before saying that he “expects” a century in the next game.

“This incident was around 2014 when I wasn’t getting much runs and was dismissed cheaply in the couple of one-day internationals. We were in a flight from Kochi to Delhi and the team was allotted seats in the front rows. A guy walked in who was a huge MS Dhoni fan and was from Chennai. So just as I got up from my seat, that guy saw me and went ‘Kohli, what’s going on? ‘I expect a hundred from you in the next game’,” the 33-year-old recalled.

Kohli admitted that the fan’s words left him infuriated, but he rather silenced him with a solid reply.

“I was young that flicked the switch in me. I asked him which company did he work for and what was his position, and told him that he should become the chairman in next three months. When he said how was that possible, I tried to make him understand that even I was trying hard but it isn’t a video game,” said Kohli.

The former India skipper then revealed that the fan next went to Dhoni to pass captaincy tips before a hilarious act from the rest of the Indian side saw even the fan laugh it off.

“He met MS and was obviously excited. But then he just started talking about team combination and captaincy and started giving tips. Dhoni was pretty patient and was hearing nicely. Till then the entire team started shouting ‘Coach! Coach!’ as he was trying to coach everyone and that’s when he laughed it off and went back to his seat. It was a funny moment,” he added.