What Travis Head’s story on Instagram says after the Virat Kohli handshake controversy

Fantastic post by the Australia opener. It shows he is only focused on his game.

Updated on: May 23, 2026, 09:32:42 IST

Written by Prateek Srivastava

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Is that a reply from Travis Head after Friday night's controversy?

"Keep the body guessing." This is the photo that has those words.

Virat Kohli refusing to shake hands with Head, after the SRH-RCB game, has taken centre stage now. Amid this, the Australian opener has shared a story on Instagram. It's a picture of him bowling during the match. He doesn't bowl often, but on Friday, he did that. And guess what? He also took a wicket, that of RCB captain Rajat Patidar.

"Keep the body guessing" is written at the bottom of the picture. It's a gym term which advocates keep on trying newer things so that the body doesn't get used to a routine because the moment it does, it reaches a plateau in regard to improvement.

Also Read: Explained: What happened between Virat Kohli and Travis Head that led to frosty post-match scenes

This is what Head appears to be saying after bowling and taking a wicket. He is an out-and-out batsman, but on Friday, he tried his hand at bowling -- something not so common for him. Head's post is kind of self-congratulatory.

All hell breaks loose

However, this post is nothing in comparison to what happened in the game. After RCB suffered a crushing 55-run loss chasing 256 to win, Kohli refused to shake hands with Head. He did shake hands with SRH skipper Pat Cummins, but not with Head.

Turns out there was something he was carrying on from his short stint at the crease. It's not clear what triggered that, but during RCB's chase, Kohli sledged Head and asked him to come and bowl "a few deliveries" to him.

Quite a few times this season, Head has come on as an impact player or has been substituted, but that wasn't the case on Friday. He wasn't substituted. Probably that was what Kohli wanted to say. "Now that you are not going to be substituted, you might as well bowl."

To be fair to Head, he looked a bit clueless when all this was happening. However, when Kohli got out, he retorted: "You are out, mate, before I could even come on to bowl."

Former India all-rounder Irfan Pathan was commentating during those moments; however, later he said the unfortunate incident could have been avoided. “What happened during the game, that can happen in the heat of the moment, but what happened after the game should not have happened,” he said.

Going by Head's post, it appears he has already moved on from the controversy. He is only focusing on himself. There couldn't have been a better post to cool things off a bit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prateek Srivastava
Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age. In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there. After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month. Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser. While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.Read More

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