On This Day: WATCH- Virat Kohli asks crowd to cheer for Steve Smith instead of booing him

Smith had returned from his ball-tampering ban in World Cup and crowd was chanting cheater.

Indian captain Virat Kohli may be one of the fiercest cricketers on the field, but he has mostly played his game within the sportsman spirit and has immense respect for his opposition players as well.

An amazing display of this compassion from Kohli was seen on this day last year during the ICC World Cup 2019 in England when India faced off against Australia. This Aussie team was seeing the returns of David Warner and Steve Smith from their one-year bans for ball-tampering and the crowd in England were giving the duo a hard time.

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Smith in particular copped a lot of boos and chants of a cheater from the stands behind the former Australia captain. However, Virat Kohli showed his classy side when he asked a section of the crowd to stop the cheater chants at Steve Smith. Kohli instead asked the crowd to clap for Smith.

Watch the video here:

There were quite a few notable performances from the Indians, with Shikhar Dhawan scoring a splendid 117, Rohit Sharma getting a 57. Skipper Virat Kohli too scored a quick-fire 82 from 77 balls. India posted 352 runs and batted the opposition out of the game.