Kuldeep and Virat have favorite footballers from rival clubs.
India captain Virat Kohli is a big fan of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, while Kuldeep Yadav admires Neymar more. Like any other rival fans, Kohli and Kuldeep engage in a lot of arguments over the football players. Even recently during the live interaction with Kevin Pietersen, he had picked Ronaldo over Lionel Messi.
Kuldeep revealed about the banters and conversations over footballers between him and Virat during Cricbuzz's Spicy Pitch Youtube show.
The first football match I saw was Brazil vs Spain in 2012, in which Neymar was playing. I saw him for the first time, and I thought he is a great player. His quality and skill level was too good. He is my favorite player since then. Many people don’t like him. Me and captain Virat Kohli argue a lot over this because he is a Ronaldo fan."
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Kuldeep's favorite football club is Barcelona. “Yes, absolutely. My favorite club is FC Barcelona. Once, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick for Portugal. So, Kohli came to me and he was showing me a video. That evening, Messi also scored a hat-trick as well, so I showed that to him and said ‘look at this’,” he said.
The 25-year-old was included in the Test playing XI for the first time in 2017 at Dharmasala against Australia. It was a huge moment for the youngster. “I get emotional when I remember my Test debut in Dharamsala. The most important thing for me at the time was how to perform. I remember a day before the match, Anil sir came to me and said ‘you will play tomorrow, you have to take 5 wickets’,” he said.
Talking about his first wicket, which was David Warner's dismissal, he said, “It was my first Test wicket. I felt really emotionally attached that I was almost into tears.”