Pakistan all-rounder Shadab Khan revealed that Indian stalwart Virat Kohli surprised him during their first-ever meeting by being warm, grounded, and speaking to him entirely in Punjabi.
Shadab had expected Kohli to mirror his intense, high-octane on-field aggression off the pitch, but found him to be a completely normal and approachable person.
The two immediately bonded through language when Kohli casually asked, "Punjabi?", and they have continued to converse in Punjabi whenever they cross paths.
Their maiden interaction happened at the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy, where Shadab famously took a crucial catch to dismiss Kohli during the final at The Oval after an earlier dropped chance by Azhar Ali.
"When I played against Virat Kohli for the first time, he surprised me. How we saw him on TV and [how he was] when I met him were totally different. So I thought, ‘He’s normal’," Shadab said while speaking on Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid’s YouTube show ‘Beard Before Wicket’.
"I speak Punjabi—he asked me, ‘Punjabi?’ and I said yeah. Now as well, whenever we meet, he just talks in Punjabi. So that guy, like, he was a legend of the game at that time as well; like, how he was talking to me—that surprised me. Because I saw his aggression and everything on the field, and when I met him, it was totally different," he added.
During the same show, Moeen stated that while Kohli is famous for his animated and fierce aggression against teams like Australia and England, he consciously dials it back during India-Pakistan fixtures.
According to Meen, Kohli recognizes that the encounters between the arch-rivals carry an emotional and geopolitical weight, requiring a calmer head to keep things from boiling over.
“And that’s why I kind of—I like that, because he does it in other games, does it against Australia, England, but not against Pakistan because he knows it’s bigger than that," Moeen remarked. “It’s not about him showing that aggression. I think he’s trying to calm things down a little bit. He’s trying to be like, ‘Actually, it’s okay’. There’s a different part to that side. And I don’t think both teams are over the top apart from the handshake thing. That’s different; that’s more political."
Virat Kohli has a dominant white-ball cricket record against Pakistan, marked by historic run-chases, multiple centuries, and high batting averages across both ODIs and T20Is.
In 17 ODI innings against the traditional rivals, Kohli has amassed 778 runs at an average of 59.85, including four hundreds and two fifties. He has scored 492 T20I runs from 11 matches at an average of 70.29 with five half-centuries.
