“She Was Quite Hurt by it”: When Virat Kohli Was Perplexed After Anushka Sharma Was Blamed For His Poor Performance in 2015 World Cup

Sexism and misogyny is as rampant as ever in the modern society as well, with the world still being run under the norms of patriarchy. One can always spot a guy next door mansplaining a woman like a toddler, whenever she puts forward her opinion on a particular topic from the world of sports.

While these entitled men claim to have omniscient knowledge of the nitty-gritty of a particular sport, a majority of them just don’t have it in them to graciously swallow the pill of defeat of their favorite player or team. So, as a natural reaction, they vent their frustration by stooping as low as targeting a woman for bringing in the so-called “bad luck” with her presence at a venue.

Something similar happened after India’s exit from ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, resultant of a semi-final loss against hosts Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The target of the trolls and keyboard warriors was star India batter Virat Kohli’s girlfriend at the time – Anushka Sharma.

The renowned actor-producer was present at the match venue to cheer Kohli and the Indian team. But, somehow, along with the entire team it was Anushka who had to also share the blame for the team’s loss for simply watching the match!

Virat Kohli Was Perplexed After Anushka Sharma Was Blamed For His Poor Performance in 2015 World Cup

Such huge were the number of online trolls and hate messages directed at Anushka that Kohli had to shame people by tweeting in defense of his current wife a year later.

During an interview with American journalist Graham Bensinger on his show In Depth With Graham Bensinger in 2019, Kohli opened up on what Anushka had gone through during that period. He also expressed his disappointment and disgust on the people who chose to take the dirty lane.

“I did not score many runs, and my wife was there watching the game, and for some reason people in our country love to blame women. Apparently the reason why we lost was because she was sitting in the stadium and she brought bad luck. It can get to that stage. A person who has no involvement in the game, who’s just watching her husband and supporting her country, suddenly has the most adverse effect on a game.

And then it got to a stage where again some incident happened and people started trolling and all those kinds of things happened. Then we spoke and she was quite hurt by it, and I thought this has to stop and I put that tweet. But, the surprising thing was it resumed again.”

Amazingly, behaviors as such are hardly exhibited the other way around. One would never come across a person blaming Kohli for “bad luck” whenever Anushka’s movie fails to deliver at the box office!

Virat Kohli’s Performance in 2015 World Cup

Kohli had preformed decently enough during the 2015 World Cup. Across eight innings, he had scored 305 runs at an average of 50.83, which included a fine century against Pakistan in Adelaide.

However, during the semi-final match against the Aussies, he was out at the score of 1 (13) to a short delivery bowled by Mitchell Johnson. India were eventually bundled out for 233 in 46.5 overs, and faced a crunching 95-run defeat to exit the tournament.