This is not the first time, and it’s unlikely to be the last that Star Sports is being criticized and trolled for putting more footage on Virat Kohli than any other player and even an important game such as the India vs South Africa fixture in the World Cup 2023.
Virat Kohli turned 35 on Sunday, and his birthday coincided with the IND vs SA match in Kolkata, a clash of the top two teams in the tournament, the only two teams who have qualified for the semi-finals so far.
Yes, Virat Kohli is a global superstar and the most followed Indian athlete on Instagram who enjoys an incredibly huge following among fans in India and abroad. However, even the fans of Kohli lamented today the overhyping of the mega-icon by Star Sports.
It has been going on for the past couple of years where not only fans, but even some ex-cricketers have voiced their opinion of Star Sports talking excessively of Virat Kohli when there are other star performers as well. Forget the day of the India matches, but Star Sports rarely misses out on talking about Virat Kohli even on non-India match days, be it during his lean or now at his new peak.
Yes, Kohli’s birthday is a cause of celebration among fans. But wouldn’t it distract the man himself from the most important task at hand: the World Cup? It was reported that Virat Kohli himself had asked the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) to not do any extravagant celebration of his birthday; CAB had reportedly planned to distribute masks of Kohli to the 70,000 spectators and have a giant cake-cutting ceremony.
But Star Sports seems to have been hell-bent on talking about Kohli in almost every segment of theirs, leaving aside proper analysis that their star-studded ex-cricketers panel could do. This behavior and trend of the broadcaster was called out by the fans on Twitter.
Fans slam Star Sports for overdoing the birthday of Virat Kohli and ignoring the IND vs SA match:
