Twitter reacts to Virat Kohli rolling his arm over to leave teammates in stitches

03/02/2020

As a batsman, what do you do when you’re not having the greatest of times with the bat? You decide to have a bowl instead. Or at least that’s what Virat Kohli does. With New Zealand seven runs shy off victory, the Indian skipper decided to have some fun by bringing himself on to bowl.

When India strode onto the field on Day 3 with a lead of 97 in their kitty, it would be fair to say that the last thing they would have expected was to see Virat Kohli roll his sleeves in the team’s quest to level the series. But well, as the famous saying goes, sport can be unpredictable at times.

After Tom Latham and Tom Blundell all but killed off the chase with fifties to their name, New Zealand found themselves at 125-3, just seven runs shy off inflicting a whitewash on India. At this point, India were going through the motions, waiting for the game to end, but out of nowhere, skipper Kohli came up with the most outrageous decision of all - he brought himself into the attack to bowl an over.

The moment Kohli took his cap off to have a bowl, unsurprisingly, there was laughter and hysteria all around the ground and the Indian players completely lost it, bursting into laughter knowing the absurdity of what they were witnessing. Mind you, it was just the 11th instance of him bowling in a Test match and just the second such instance since the start of 2018.

So unsurprisingly, the batsman Henry Nicholls was nervous, because let’s be honest, who would ever want to get out to the bowling of Kohli? The first ball was wide outside-off and did not trouble the batsman, but the second *ALMOST* ended up finding the fielder at mid-on after Nicholls shanked a pull-shot. Rishabh Pant, behind the stumps, was at his chirpy best and at one point, the mood was so gala that it felt like it was India who were on top.

Eventually, though, sanity was restored after the batsman smacked Kohli for a boundary on the fourth ball towards backward point and the last two balls were uneventful with Nicholls happy to just see through the over. Not the ‘twist’ that we expected when the day began, but some entertainment is better than no entertainment, I suppose?

Kohli trying his luck with the ball