Kohli's pot-to-kettle moment
Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express opines that the Virat Kohli incident in Mumbai was an example of IPL's fan loyalty finally falling into place
ESPNcricinfo staff
29-Apr-2013
The jeers from the Wankhede crowd may have hurt Virat Kohli and made him question the aspect of crowd loyalty in the IPL, but has suddenly highlighted the tournament's engagement with fans. In the Indian Express, Sandeep Dwivedi believes the incident is an indicator of the emerging fan loyalties
Kohli missed the point and had a pot-to-kettle kind of hypocritical exchange with the MI fans. Gambhir for him was a rival, not a Delhi or India team-mate. But when Mumbai treated him like a rival, he sulked. Wankhede, in the past, had booed Tendulkar, that too while he wore India's whites. Kohli should have known better.
In Wisden India, Shamya Dasgupta writes that Kohli should learn to the crowd reaction in his stride because it's the fans' right to cheer and jeer.
As far as I am concerned, a sport exists because of the people who watch it. The crowd is an unempowered entity that can only do two things during a match - cheer and jeer - and only one more thing afterwards, which is to talk about the game, on street corners and on Twitter. An international sportsperson must be able to take all reactions in his stride, and know that he is who he is because of his fans. The fans don't exist because of him.