India vs Australia: Virat Kohli walks a different route: 'Emotions will flare but nothing personal'

It required the intervention of Shahdi Durrani, team manager, and Bapu Nadkarni, assistant team manager, to cool the situation. Then we had seen Sachin Tendulkar given leg before to Glenn McGrath by umpire Daryl Harper in the 1999 Adelaide Test.

The master batsman was clearly unhappy as a low bouncer hit his shoulder while crouched under the ball. We have also seen the ugly spat between umpire S Venkatraghavan and Michael Slater in 2001 at the Wankhede Stadium. Then we have the ‘Monkeygate’ incident in 2007-08 series involving Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds that almost resulted in the scrapping of Test series.

More recently, Virat Kohli got stuck into Australians after the DRS controversy during the Bengaluru Test in 2016-17 series that led to prolonged war of words.

But as India are ready to face Australia in the latest series starting on Thursday (December 17), Kohli hinted at a more ‘friendly’ series.

“This year has made people realise that a lot of things which might not have been necessary in the past, where you hold grudges and have unnecessary tension between teams or individuals, is absolutely pointless. You are still going to be professional and make sure that you are positive and aggressive in your body language and the way you go about on the field,” Kohli said during a virtual press conference.

“I don’t think that things are going to be as personal as they used to be before. We understand that we are contributing to a larger cause and it’s the quality of cricket that has to stand out. It could be a culmination of playing IPL together, and also Australia changing their approach to an extent.

“The way things have panned out this year, everyone is grateful for the opportunity to be back on the field. It’s not like the games haven’t been as intense, it’s just that the unnecessary stuff has been filtered out. There is much more respect between the sides,” said Kohli.

However, Kohli said some banter will be the order of the day during the series. “We should not compromise on the quality of the game. Banters will go on here and there all the time – that’s the highest level of cricket we play and it’s going to be competitive. There is going to be stress, tension, emotions flaring every now and then. But I don’t foresee anything getting personal anymore,” he said.

“If you are stepping onto the field thinking we will have smiles on our faces, handshakes throughout the day, that’s a wrong idea to have. You have to maintain the dignity of the sport, and also have to understand that you are competing at the highest level with two quality sides going at each other. There will be moments when things are going to be difficult and teams are going to stand at each other, but not in a disrespectful way,” he said.