Virat Kohli was on fire for India in the 2014-15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy that was played in Australia. The star batter played in all four Tests against the Baggy Greens on that tour and, with the help of four centuries, scored 692 runs. In that series, Kohli made his Test captaincy debut for India and was engaged in an intense battle with Australian pacer Mitchell Johnson, who finished the series with 13 wickets to his name in three Tests.

During a recent event, Kohli opened up about an incident that took place during the first Test on that tour and recalled how, after getting hit by Johnson, he got motivated to smash him to all corners of the ground.

“The first match came. First ball of the tour. He hit me on the head here. First ball. And at that time, at first, it was disbelief. I was like, man. Literally for 60 days, I have been visualising that I will play like this. I will play like this. It was like a complete change of plans. The first ball hit my head, and it was a heavy blow. And my vision started dropping on the left eye; swelling came here; I didn’t know. So, two balls were left for lunch, and I played. So, what happened at lunch? And again, these are the things that I feel grateful for. Now I can’t say that I thought during lunch that I would do this. There were two options: fight or flight.”

“So, naturally, my reaction at lunch was, How did he hit me on the head? Yeah. How did he hit me on the head? How did he hit me on the head? I was like, How is this possible? I thought iss series mein isko main itna maarunga naa isko (I would hit him this much in this series). And that’s exactly what I did,” he added.

Kohli was the standout Indian batter on that tour and earned massive praise around the world for his gutsy show against the Australian team. However, despite his batting heroics, India wasn’t able to win the series and went down by a margin of 0-2 after losing the first two matches in Adelaide and Brisbane.