'Virat Kohli went to his room and cried', recalls Pradeep Sangwan

Before bringing laurels to India, Virat Kohli was belting out runs for the Delhi state side across age groups cricket. Kohli made his Under-15 debut for Delhi way back in 2002 and ended up making his First-Class debut in 2006. His Delhi teammate Pradeep Sangwan was the only constant until the early 2010s when Kohli became a brand.

Delhi teammate Sangwan played under Kohli in the 2008 Under-19 ICC World Cup, where they beat South Africa by 12 runs to clinch the trophy on a rainy evening in Malaysia.

Sangwan, who recently played in the Indian Premier League (IPL) with the winner's Gujarat Titans (GT), reminisced his time with Kohli from his under-17 Delhi days.

Speaking to News24, Sangwan narrated a story where his Delhi coach and teammates pranked the then 16-year-old.

"We were playing in an U17 match in Punjab. He (Kohli) hadn't been scoring big in the past 2-3 innings. We had a coach named Ajit Chaudhary who used to call him 'Cheeku'. Virat was the main player of our team, and Ajit sir funnily suggested, 'let's tell him he will not play in the next match. So we all joined in on the prank," he said.

He further dwelled on the prank in detail.

"In the team meeting, sir didn't announce Virat's name. He went to his room and started crying! He phone-called sir and said I've scored a 200 and a 250.. he had scored big in that season, to be honest,"

"It's just that he didn't get enough runs in the past 2-3 innings. After that, he got so emotional he even phone-called Rajkumar sir (Virat's childhood coach)!" Sangwan said.

The 31-year-old described how Kohli reacted when he was told the whole non-playing thing was a prank and nothing more.

"Then, he came to me and asked, 'Tell me, Sangwan, what's wrong? I scored so many runs this season. I told him, 'Yes, yes, that's very wrong!'. He wasn't able to sleep all night as well.

He said, "No, I don't want to sleep. What's the point of sleeping when I'm not playing?' Then, I told him that he's playing. It was all a prank!" concluded the left-arm bowler.