KG v Kohli: seconds out, round No. 1

People laugh at Kohli for resembling nothing so much as an overgrown toddler in the throes of a constant temper tantrum.

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TELFORD VICE in Southampton

IF this was boxing, people would say Kagiso Rabada had gone soft. That he should have revealed that many people outside the Indian cricket bubble consider Virat Kohli an arrogant clown who happens to be a fine batsman.

But boxing is a business — unlike cricket, which is a sport — that cripples and kills its finest and failures alike. Its violence is visceral. Its aggression is real. Boxers fight because they have to, not because they want to. You can legally kill someone on a cricket ground, but you’re not indifferent to whether they wind up bleeding, in hospital, or dead. That’s the difference.

So the nonsense that Kohli should “punish” Rabada for his comments about India’s captain in an interview with ESPNcricinfo’s The Cricket Monthly is risible. How, exactly, could Rabada be put to rights? If anything, it’s he who has the sole authority, in the shape of a hard ball that he is able to hurl at speed, to emphasise what he said by leaving Kohli bleeding, in hospital, or worse. If Rabada should choose to do so, there isn’t much Kohli or anyone else — not even the police — could do. Kohli’s only weapon is runs, and they hurt in the scorebook and nowhere else.

Rabada’s view, that Kohli is only too ready to confront opponents on the field but “when you give it back to him, he gets angry”, has not gone down well in India.

Neither has this: “I don't get the guy. Maybe he does it because it gets him going, but that comes across as very immature for me. He is a phenomenal player but he can't take the abuse.”

Or this: “ … I asked myself, ‘That guy [Kohli] always seems to be angry on the field. Is he really angry?’.”

Someone especially brave might want to tell those Indians that people laugh at Kohli for resembling nothing so much as an overgrown toddler in the throes of a constant temper tantrum. They only find it funnier that he is elfin and bearded and frequently wild-eyed, like some enraged troll emerging from under a bridge.

That Kohli is probably none of the above — when asked on Tuesday about Rabada’s comments he had the good sense to restrict his immediate reply to: “What did he say?” — is no doubt lost on the people who want to keep their stereotype of him alive. He didn’t dispute what was said. but he made sure he knew exactly what he was being asked. That takes nous.

The rest of his answer — “I played against him many times and if anything needs to be discussed we can discuss it man-to-man. I'm not using a press conference to answer anything.” — was the work of someone who knows his way around life in the spotlight.

It was, of course, left to Faf du Plessis to answer for Rabada: “I don't know the context of what was said in that article. So, for me to comment on that …

“Virat is a great player. Whether you say something bad in the media or you say something good, he is still going to rock up at the match a good player.”

For all its built-in fakery, boxing is what it says it is to anyone who asks: a damn hard way to earn a living. By comparison, cricket is a dull but cushy office job.

So, when Rabada steams in at Kohli in a World Cup match in Southampton on Wednesday, nobody will be thinking about blood.

Not on the field, at least.