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The fight between Virat Kohli and Naveen-ul-Haq in the 2023 IPL season is still one of the biggest stories in the T20 league’s past.
The 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) saw a big dust-up during a game with Royal Challengers Bangalore’s ace Virat Kohli and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) bowler Naveen-ul-Haq which later pulled in LSG coach Gautam Gambhir, blew up bigger than just the match causing quite a buzz.
LSG spinner Amit Mishra talked about the incident on a podcast. Mishra said the problem started a few games before in Bengaluru when LSG beat Bangalore. During that match, Gambhir did a “finger on mouth” thing to make the crowd be quiet, which Kohli didn’t seem to like.
“It all began in Bengaluru when we won, and Gautam did that thing to tell the fans to be quiet. Virat didn’t like that,” Mishra said. “We thought it was done, but Kohli wasn’t over it.”
Mishra spilled the beans about what went down when the teams played again in Lucknow. He said Kohli started trash-talking LSG players. “He began insulting our guys in the rematch. He didn’t have any beef with Kyle Mayers but still bad-mouthed him. He also picked on Naveen-ul-Haq while he was bowling. We could have avoided a lot of drama, but Kohli decided to stir things up.”
Mishra tried to step in during his batting partnership with Naveen. He told Kohli there was no need to be so aggressive. Kohli’s comeback? He told Mishra to go talk to Naveen instead.
Even after the game finished, Kohli kept insulting Naveen during the usual handshakes, Mishra said. This made Gambhir step in. “Once the match was over, Kohli began trash-talking Naveen again. That’s when Gambhir got involved asking why Kohli was causing problems again after the game had finished. I pulled Gambhir away, but later Naveen came to the locker room and told us Kohli had started badmouthing him again,” Mishra explained.
Even though it looked like Kohli and Naveen had made up on social media, Mishra doesn’t think Naveen will ever look up to Kohli again. “On social media, it seemed like they were done fighting. But do you reckon Naveen’s gonna respect Kohli ever again? And what about the kids who saw a big star cussing out others?” Mishra wondered.
