When Virat Kohli meets Mr Nags – a character played by TV presenter Danish Sait – expect nothing but puns, laughter, and cheeky comments. The latest episode of the duo’s shoot for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru social media handles featured pretty much the same and much more.
Right at the beginning of the four-minute 51-second-long video, Nags, in his own hilarious and mischievous style, asked Kohli whether he is friends with him because he is a common man and not a commentator. Kohli understood the pun behind it and shared a laugh.
But the RCB legend, who has been a part of numerous such RCB insider shows with Nags, was stumped by the following question.
Mr. Nags stumps Kohli by ‘Sunil’ reference
“See Virat, I want to talk about a friend of yours. Not mine but your friend. He said a lot of nice things about you… Sunil,” said Mr Nags with a cheeky smile.
“Who?” Kohli asked perplexedly. “Chhetri,” Nags replied. The duo then broke into a spontaneous laugh.
The laugh had a lot to do with the witty way Nags mentioned “Sunil” in his comments. Cricket fans did not take much time to figure out the pun behind it.
Legendary Indian cricketer Sunil Gavaskar had a go at Virat Kohli not too long ago for the latter’s message to the critics of his strike rate.
“If you have a strike rate of 118, you come and face the first ball, and then you get out in the 14th or 15th over and your strike rate is 118 – if you want applause for that, then that’s a little bit different,” Gavaskar had said. “We’ve all played a bit of cricket, not a lot of cricket, but we speak about what we see. We don’t necessarily have any likes and dislikes. Even if we have likes or dislikes, we actually speak about what’s happening. So, I would be very disappointed if Star Sports showed this once more because that would be questioning all of us commentators.”
The scathing criticism took social media by storm. Kohli responded with the bat in his next match by smashing 92 off 47 balls against Punjab Kings. He also made a cheeky strike rate reference after that blazing knock. “It was important to keep up my strike-rate through the innings, so I wanted to take on the momentum,” Kohli said with a wry smile during the mid-innings interview with the broadcasters.
Kohli has been in fantastic form in this IPL. He is the runaway leader for the Orange Cap, with 661 runs in 13 matches. His strike rate of 155.16 is also the best-ever in his 17-year-long IPL career.
RCB, however, face a do-or-die match against Chennai Super Kings on Saturday. They need to beat the five-time winners by a considerable margin to qualify for the playoffs.