Usually, Virat Kohli doesn’t bowl. It is for this very reason that when he picked up the ball against Hong Kong, it was his first T20I over in more than six years—and his first in more than two years. Hong Kong was out of competition and India skipper Rohit Sharma thought of giving a little break to his usual bowlers, handing the ball to none other than Virat Kohli.
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While Kohli rolled over his arm, his fans hardly noticed that he last bowled in 2016 T20 World Cup in the semi-final against West Indies, a match India went onto lose.
Meanwhile, this was his first over in international cricket since February 2020 where he rolled over his arm against New Zealand in a losing cause. Furthermore, his childhood coach Rajkumar Sharma revealed that how perhaps that IPL 2012 over might have pushed him to change his mind.
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“Virat was always confident as a bowler. Morkel did dent his confidence a bit in the past (laughs) but he was always keen to take the ball and used to say – ‘give me the ball, I will pick wickets.’ So it is great to see him bowling again,” said Sharma on India News Sports.
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It was in IPL 2012 that Kohli got the ball and he bowled one of the terrible overs to let CSK get out of jail. Playing against RCB, CSK chased a mammoth target of 206 and were 163/4 when Kohli came in to bowl the 19th over. In one of a classic assaults, Morkel latched onto Kohli, slamming him for 28 runs in that over, hitting two fours and three sixes, which ended up being the turning point of the match. They then smashed 17 runs off the final over to actually win the match.
Kohli got an opportunity to bowl against Hong Kong where he bowled one over and gave away six runs without taking a wicket.
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