Virat Kohli was constant talk of the town during the 2018-19 Australia Test series, which India won by 2-1. Apart from his exploits with the willow, the Indian captain had grabbed the headlines for his antics on the field.
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Kohli had looked in his elements – from asking the crowd to make more noise, motivating and encouraging his teammates to celebrate every wicket wildly to indulge in a verbal duel with his Australian counterpart, Tim Paine.
Subsequently, Virat coped a lot of criticism from Australian legends for his on-field behaviour. The likes of Allan Border, Mike Hussey, Mitchell Johnson and even India's Sanjay Manjrekar had expressed their displeasure over Virat’s on-field behaviour.
Recently Australian coach Justin Langer spoke about Kohli's aggressive celebrations during that series, in which the Aussies were determined to patch up their severely dented image in the wake of ball-tampering scandal and thus had decided to not engage with the Indian captain verbally.
"I remember that afternoon (feeling) like a punching bag. We can't fight back because it felt like we had our hands behind our backs and we just had to take it," Langer said in Amazon's recently released docu-series titled 'The Test'.
"You must be feeling the double standards the way their captain is carrying on and we sort of have to be careful. Imagine if we behaved two out of ten (of) that," he added.
Langer asked his wards to take on Kohli but warned the hosts not to cross the line between banter and abuse.
"There is a difference between abuse and banter. There is no room for abuse. We don't need to abuse him but there is banter where you stick up for your mate."
During the second Test in Perth, Kohli indulged in a verbal spat with Paine, forcing on-field umpire Chris Gaffaney to warn both the skippers. That was the time Paine thought he had enough.
"I sort of just had enough and thought you also have to stand up for yourself and your teammates and that was one of the reasons I thought, 'no, I'm the captain, it's my turn, I have to stand up and show him we're here for the fight'," the Australian captain said.
(With PTI inputs)
