Virat Kohli enjoyed his best outing in Australia during the 2014-15 Border Gavaskar Trophy, which riled up the home team, including Mitchell Johnson, who planned to try and get under the skin of India’s superstar early in his innings but Kohli had the last laugh scoring four hundreds and a fifty.
Recalling his face-off with Kohli, former Australia pacer Johnson talked about his “well-publicised personal rivalry” in his column for ‘The West Australian’, saying that they both played the game in the same intense way and never backed down.
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“I had a well-publicised personal rivalry with Kohli. We had many interactions on the field and I enjoyed it. While I didn’t know him off the field, on the field we probably played the game in a similar way – taking the game on and not backing down,” wrote the former left-arm pacer, who played 73 Tests for Australia and took 313 wickets.
“Some don’t like that style of cricket and prefer there’s no chat with the opposition, but I enjoyed that part of the game. I would become frustrated during some of our battles, but I also enjoyed that he kept coming at me. It’s always a nice feeling to get one of the best out, and likewise, I’m sure he enjoyed taking me down and hitting me for a four or a six,”
One incident Johnson mentioned in the column was when he tried to run out Kohli during the Boxing Day Test of the 2014-15 tour. He threw the ball back at the stumps after his follow-through and the ball hit Kohli in the process, which annoyed him.
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“Most of our differences stemmed from the Boxing Day Test in 2014, when a ball I threw hit him on the body. I was legitimately trying to run him out, but he didn’t like what I did. He made some comments in the media that night about having no respect for me as a player, which annoyed me,” Johnson wrote.
“The goal from our point of view was generally to get Kohli riled up as soon as he came out to bat and take his focus away from his skills. Get him annoyed and get him playing a big shot early.”
The incident fired up Kohli and he went on to score a brilliant 169 in the first innings of that Test in Melbourne, while Johnson had his moment against Kohli early on but he was dropped.
“In that Test match at the MCG, we got him off guard early and had him playing at a ball he didn’t need to in frustration and unfortunately we dropped him on not many. He then focussed and harnessed his energy and piled on the runs – all 169 of them,” Johnson recalled.
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“When bowling to him, I can remember thinking we had to get him early or else we could be in trouble. If you didn’t get Kohli in the first 10 or so balls, he would often make you pay.”
Kohli ended up scoring 692 runs in his eight innings during the 2014-15 series, only behind the Australian run-machine during that BGT, Steve Smith, who aggregated 769 runs.
But going into the BGT series beginning in four days’ time, the 36-year-old Kohli is a mere shadow of himself compared to his peak before the Covid era. Lately, he failed in 9 of his last 10 Test innings, scoring just 99 runs in the two Tests against Bangladesh and 93 in the three Tests against New Zealand.
The first Test of the coming five-match Border Gavaskar Trophy begins on November 22 in Perth. India must win four of the five Tests in the series to outrightly qualify for the World Test Championship final.
