The scene from Cape Town during the third Test, when Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli spoke to the stump microphone and chastised the TV broadcaster for siding with the home team, will live in infamy. What’s worse, Ravichandran Ashwin and KL Rahul have joined the ‘we versus. them’ rant. It only demonstrates that everyone on the squad now considers this to be acceptable behavior, and the BCCI has silently approved of it.
No real Amitabh Bachchan fan can forget the scene from Amar Akbar Anthony in which he (the character of Anthony) scolds himself for drinking, blames getting badly beaten up on being intoxicated, and then applies a band-aid on the mirror instead of his wounds.
Similarly, no die-hard Virat Kohli fan will forget the scene from Cape Town, in which he speaks to the stump microphone and chastises the TV presenter for ‘siding’ with the local team. Intoxication made Anthony’s behavior plausible in Prayag Raj’s screenplay, but it will be difficult for the screenwriter of Kohli’s biopic to make this stump mic scenario plausible for future cinema goers who may not have seen it live.
To be fair to Kohli, Ashwin, and Rahul, Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the first Indian cricketer to demonstrate that he is above the game. He rushed right into the ground during a 2019 IPL game between his side Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals to protest a no-ball ruling overruled by the leg umpire.
