'Fake account': Naveen-ul-Haq says he has not apologised to Virat Kohli after on-field spat

Ever since Lucknow Super Giants’ (LSG) Afghan bowler Naveen-ul-Haq got into a heated exchange with Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) Virat Kohli, he has been a much talked about topic online. Kohli fans have come up will all kinds of funny memes and posts to mock him. Similarly, a Twitter handle with Naveen’s name, which even had a blue tick, on 24 May, tweeted an apology to Kohli, which went viral instantly with over 25000 likes. But Naveen has confirmed that it was a fake account.

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He took to his Instagram story to clarify the issue. He posted a screengrab of the Twitter handle and asked his fans to report it. The account was taken down soon after.

Ever since the incident with Kohli, Naveen has been met with slogans of ‘Kohli’ by fans at different stadiums in Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kolkata and even at the eliminator against Mumbai Indians (MI) in Chennai.

Although Naveen stayed away from responding to the jeering directly so far, he did take the opportunity to celebrate with his hands on his ears every time he took a wicket against MI and also opened up about it in the post-match conference.

“I enjoy it. I like the crowd chanting his [Virat Kohli’s] name or any other player’s name. It gives me passion to play well for my team”, he said.

“Well, I don’t concentrate on the noise from the outside or anything else. I just focus on my own process. It’s not like if the crowd is chanting or anyone is saying something… it doesn’t affect me. As professional sportsmen, you have to take this in your stride. One day you will not do your best for the team and the fans will give it to you. On another day, you will do a special thing for your team and the same people can chant your name. So, [it’s] basically a part and parcel of the game.”

Naveen had got into an argument with Kohli during the teams’ second league stage clash on 1 May.

After LSG’s Amit Mishra, who was also on the crease with Naveen at the time, and umpires intervened and calmed things down, tension flared up again during the customary post-match handshake which saw both coming face-to-face and getting into a charged-up confrontation, which only stopped shy of a brawl.

After both were pushed away for the second time, and an LSG player tried to talk to Virat about what had unfolded, the LSG coach descended into the commotion and had an ugly showdown with Kohli. Both Kohli and Gambhir were penalised 100 per cent of their match fee, and Naveen was also charged 50 per cent of the fee for the ruckus and veterans had even gone to the lengths of suggesting for suspension from a few games to make an example.

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