BY SPORTSCAST WRITER
HARARE – Virat Kohli has a great affinity for Zimbabwe, having made his T20I debut there 13 years ago as fresh-faced 22-year-old rookie in 2010.
On that tour, Kohli and his Indian teammates got to attend a surprise international friendly match in Harare between Zimbabwe and Brazil ahead of the 2010 football World Cup tournament in South Africa.
The African country also features in the love life of the Indian superstar, because it was here that he received the call that led to him meeting his future wife, the gorgeous Indian actress and model Anushka Sharma.
The 35-year-old India batting kingpin revealed this in an interview with former South African cricketer AB de Villiers, who now runs a Podcast.
“I remember this was 2013. I had just been made captain on the tour to Zimbabwe,” Kohli said.
“And I was very excited and looking forward to the tour. My manager called me one day on the tour and was like ‘a commercial opportunity has come up and you got do this and I was like cool’. And he was like ‘you’ve got to shoot it with Anushka Sharma’. And she was already established and already one of the top actresses in India. And during the shoot (in Mumbai) I was ‘like how the hell am I going to do this advert’. I was so nervous, I was so nervous. And then the tour came, went to Mumbai, came to shoot. I was so tense before walking onto the step. I remember I was so nervous. I was completely out of place. I didn’t realise how tall she was. She walked there and I was like ‘what am I going to say, what am I going to say’. She’s wearing decent (size) heels and somebody must have told here he’s going to look like a dwarf in front of you, make sure your heels aren’t too high. So first think I told her was didn’t you have anything high to wear and she’s like ‘excuse me!’ It was so bad. Then shoot took place and I kind figured out along the day that she’s actually a normal person.”
Kohli and Anushka tied the knot in December 2017 in Italy.
