Virat Kohli has played many special knocks in his brilliant and widely decorated career. Many of them came against Australia as well, however, former Aussie skipper Tim Paine recently recalled India's tour of Australia in 2021-22, which stood out for him.
The 33-year-old, then skipper of the team was due to play just the first match of the Border-Gavaskar trophy, with his wife Anushka due with their first child, Kohli had decided to fly back home for the birth of Vamika.
Before that, however, he played one of the sublime knocks, and speaking on Neeraj Pandey's recently released documentary series on Voot, Paine recalled that Kohli was looking like he'd never get out, during the first Test, which led the then Aussie skipper to think that his side were in for a long night.
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The Indian skipper played a fine knock of 74 runs, and he was joined by Ajinkya Rahane as well, however, much to Paine's relief a mix-up between the Indian batters saw Kohli get dismissed via a run-out.
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"Yeah, I must admit though when he was batting... he was on 20-30. Then the lights came on, and I was like 'Wow, He did not look like getting out', did he? And I was like we are in some serious trouble here," said the former Australian captain.
He continued, "I do remember for about 15 minutes, I was like 'Oh Christ!' yeah when he got through that first period of the night, I thought 'Oh trouble'. Rahane looked just as good too there for a little while."
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After the mix-up between Kohli and Rahane, India suffered a huge collapse and went from 188/4 to being bowled out for 244.
Paine also added how he felt that one moment between the two Indians completely changed the course of the game, otherwise, they nearly would have pulled away with a win for India.
"They were batting beautifully and then, thankfully, Rahane ran him out. It was brilliant. Particularly, when you feel so out of the game, we couldn't create a chance and they were batting so well, to then be literally just gifted one, and a really simple one, of their best player who was making it look pretty easy, in a difficult condition for a new batter to come in against the pink ball under lights, it's a hard place to start you innings, that was a huge shift in the game. They were not far off taking that first Test completely away from us," he stated further.
