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India pacer 'went mad', got banned after Virat Kohli riled him up: 'Woh tujhe maarne aaya, aur tune kuch nahi kara?'
A veteran of over 100 Tests, the India pacer revealed how his ultra-aggressive behaviour, triggered by Virat Kohli, led to a one-match suspension.
There's a reason why Virat Kohli is India's most successful Test captain. Despite his batting accolades and the ability to marshal his troops, Kohli's sense of each and every cricketer that played under him stands out. He was aware of how to get the best out of each player. Be it motivating Mohammed Shami ahead of the Cape Town Test in 2018 or giving that once-in-a-lifetime '60 overs of hell's speech to his teammates, Kohli knew which nerve to strike. However, this one instance, revealed by a veteran India bowler, reflects how Kohli's excessive motivation has also backfired, despite the rarity of such a repercussion.
India pacer Ishant Sharma recalled when he was handed a one-match ban by the ICC, during Kohli's first series as India's full-time Test captain. Kohli made his captaincy debut for India in the Adelaide Test of the 2014-15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy when MS Dhoni couldn't take the field due to a broken thumb. However, after Dhoni called time on his Test career, India travelled to Sri Lanka in June of 2015 with a new captain in Kohli leading the charge. In the third Test at Colombo, certain incidents involving Ishant and a few members of the Sri Lankan team led to the ICC taking strict actions against all.
"This happened during the 2015 Sri Lanka Test series. Dhammika Prasad was bowling bouncers at me. I took a single and as I was reaching the non-striker's end, I told him, 'You are too slow to hit me on the head'. This is what started it. Then, him and I kept going back-and-forth. But suddenly, Dinesh Chandimal came from third man, and he elbowed me. In the heat of the moment, Ashwin got out, and I ran back to the dressing room – because I had to change my shoes. When I was doing it, I suddenly saw that Ravi Shastri and Sri Lanka's manager were leaving the dressing room. They thought that Dhammika and I had fought with each other. However, Dhammika Prasad followed me all the way into the Indian dressing room," Ishant said on the Raj Shamani podcast.
Ishant Sharma explains the incident at length
"Virat knows how to rile me up. I was unaware. That's when Virat told me, 'Woh tere peeche tujhe maarne aa gaya, aur tune kuch nahi kiya? Dhammika Prasad tujhe maarne aaya tha' (He came all the way to beat you, and you didn't do a thing?) Then made me watch the clip where Chandimal elbowed me. And I swear, I went mad. I am usually not that aggressive but that day, my protective mode crept in. By then, my match fee had already gotten deducted. Then I went out to bowl, dismissed three batters and celebrated on their face. And got banned."
Ishant and Chandimal were handed one-match bans, while Prasad and Lahiru Thirimanne were fined 50 percent of their match fee. Ishant's ban meant that he had received two suspension points, ruling him out of the first Test against South Africa in Mohali in November. While something of this nature is never easy to accept, Kohli shared a very different perspective.
"I was very happy with the incident when he was batting because it happened at the right time for us - we had to bowl yesterday and they made him angry and it couldn't have happened at a better time for us," Kohli said. "The timing was absolutely perfect and everything fell in place for us as far as being aggressive is concerned. And the way he bowled in the second innings, he didn't concede a boundary for 19 overs. And that's the kind of pressure he created on those batsmen because of one incident. So it had to be controlled but in the end it benefitted us."
