Virat in familiar territory as RCB face Capitals
It is very clear which superstar reigns in the hearts of the Capital's Arun Jaitley Stadium. It is none other than the former India captain and premier batter Virat Kohli. A day before the top clash between hosts Delhi Capitals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru, a motley crowd gathered to watch the warm-up routines of both the teams. They had their pick as the chants 'RCB, RCB' suggested. Kohli had caused a stampede outside this very stadium when he returned to play a Ranji Trophy match against Railways as over 12,000 fans trooped in to watch the biggest star from these parts of the world.
It would not be any different on Sunday when the two sides — DC and RCB — favourites to qualify for the playoffs square up. It would be interesting to see whether Kohli does a KL Rahul on the pitch. In many of the subplots of the season, the wicketkeeper-batter of Delhi Capitals had rubbed the Bengaluru team the wrong way after hitting the winning runs in their first leg and marking it by thumping his chest and planting his bat on the ground in suggestion that screamed to one and all that 'this is my ground'. That day Rahul scored 93 off 53 balls to take Delhi to a six-wicket win.
RCB's Tim David had mocked Rahul's celebration then, however, assistant coach of the team Malolan Rangarajan dismissed that his team took offence to that gesture by a former player. When asked whether the team talked about Rahul's antics, Rangarajan said there was no discussion about it.
"We did not discuss it at all. KL had quite a few celebrations after the game. He played a good knock but we had no discussions about it at all," Rangarajan told the media on Saturday.
Kohli, on the contrary, never forgets. After playing a starring role in India's T20 International win over West Indies in 2019, Virat used his bat as an imaginary notebook and ticked Kesrick Williams' name after hitting him for a six. Kohli then explained in the post-match presentation that Williams had ticked his name after dismissing him that year, so it was payback.
