South Africa pacer Kagiso Rabada said that he finds India captain Virat Kohli “very immature” following an exchange between the two players during an Indian Premier League match, the 24-year-old said in an interview with ESPNCricinfo.
In Delhi, Rabada and Kohli exchanged words after the latter and his batting partner Parthiv Patel hit boundaries. Rabada shed light on the incident: “I was just thinking about the game plan, really, but Virat, he hit me for a boundary and then he had a word,” Rabada said.
“And then when you give it back to him, he gets angry. I don’t get the guy. Maybe he does it because it gets him going, but that comes across as very immature for me. He is a phenomenal player but he can’t take the abuse.”
Rabada revealed that anger does not drive him on the field. The fast bowler has earned a few demerit points and has been involved in some heated verbal stoushes with opposition players. On Kohli’s on-field demeanour, Rabada said: “But later that evening, on the bus back to the hotel, I asked myself: ‘That guy [Kohli] always seems to be angry on the field. Is he really angry?’ Then I thought to myself what it would take for me to become really, really angry.
“That is going to happen very few and far times in between. And becoming angry like that – is that what gets him to play well? I can’t psyche myself to be angry.”
However, Rabada said that being in the middle of a battle of supremacy between bat and ball brought the best out of him. “But those things can’t distract you. In fact, for me it just wakes me up, if anything,” Rabada said.
“If somebody comes at me and says, ‘I’m going to hit you. I’m going to clobber you. You are soft’, it wakes me up because – it’s a fight-or-flight response.
“You have to think about what you are going to do, because the wicket was good. All it was was a verbal fight. Something like that will not distract me. If anything, it is just going to wake me up to hit my areas a lot more consistently.”
Rabada is widely regarded as one of the premier bowlers in the world. India play their World Cup opener against South Africa on June 5.