From foes to friends, Kohli and Maxwell turned their strained relationship around in RCB colours in the IPL from 2021. (Sportzpics)
Australia all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has revealed that former India captain and his Royal Challengers Bengaluru teammate, Virat Kohli, had once blocked him on social media.
Maxwell and Kohli had developed a strained relationship before the hard-hitting Aussie joined RCB for Rs 14.5 crore ahead of the IPL 2021 season. While forging a fresh bond with his then RCB captain, Maxwell would soon realise that the star India batter had blocked him on social media in reaction to an incident that occurred four years earlier, in 2017, during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in India.
“When I knew that I was going to RCB, Virat was the first guy to message and welcome me to the team. When I turned up for the pre-IPL training camp, we got chatting and spent a fair bit of time training together as you do. So I go to his social. media, follow him. Didn’t even think about it before that. Never really crossed my mind. I was like ‘I can’t find him,” Maxwell said on the LiSTNR Sport podcast.
“I’m sure he’s on social media somewhere so I didn’t think anything of it. Not really that maybe he wasn’t savvy with Instagram. Didn’t really understand why he wasn’t coming up and then someone mentioned that he might have blocked you. That is the only way you’re not able to find him. I was like surely not.”
The 2017 Ranchi incident
During the third Test of the fiery 2017 BGT series in Ranchi, Maxwell had mocked Kohli, who had injured his shoulder on the opening day. While Maxwell returned to the field after scoring his maiden Test hundred, he clutched his right shoulder and took a dig at the then-Indian captain. In a series replete of several on-field clases between India and Australia players, an injured Kohli had to eventually miss the decisive fourth Test in Dharamsala that India went onto win by eight wickets.
Kohli would later reveal that Maxwell’s mocking gesture had irked and provoked him to go for the ‘block’ button on Instagram.
Kohli was irked by Maxwell’s mocking gesture in the 2017 Ranchi Test and later blocked him on Instagram. (X)
“Then I went and asked him ‘Have you blocked me on Instagram?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah probably. It was when you mocked me during that Test match. I think I got the sh*** and decided to block you. I was like ‘yeah, that’s fair enough’. So yeah, he ended up unblocking me, and we became great friends after that,” Maxwell added.
Maxwell, however, revealed that he and Kohli have since developed an amiable relationship across four reasons with RCB.
“It was a nice little story to have as a little side note but we’ve had quite a funny relationship leading up to playing the IPL together. Sharing that dressing room and sharing experiences, becoming parents, I suppose, around the same time. From the days we were both young and brash and going hard at each other on the field. We were in the front and centre of all that as well, sort of being the orchestrator like ‘Maxi, get into his face. Say some words to him and get the young guy to do the hard work’”.
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