Ganguly retaliates after Kohli's 'unfollow' as rift deepens amid IPL

Sourav Ganguly has struck back! After the three viral videos from the IPL 2023 match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Delhi Capitals at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday and Virat Kohli's social-media act following that on Sunday, Ganguly has retaliated. And the former BCCI president's move shows that the ugly rift between the two stalwarts of Indian cricket has deepened.

On Saturday, moments after RCB's 23-run win against Delhi Capitals at the Chinnaswamy, two videos went viral on social media which eventually became the cynosure of the match. In the first, Kohli was seen throwing a cold stare at Ganguly, who was sitting inside the DC dug out, two overs before RCB's win. In the second video, the DC director of cricket was seen avoiding a handshake with Kohli as he jumped the queue, going past Ricky Ponting to meet the rest of the RCB players.

On Monday, ahead of RCB's third home match, against the Chennai Super Kings, a fresh unseen video from the DC game went viral on Twitter where Ganguly was seen blatantly ignoring Kohli, who was seated all padded up before the start of that match. What followed was a menacing stare from the former RCB skipper.

In between the two days, Kohli unfollowed Ganguly on Instagram, which clarified that the rift between the two legendary cricketers is true. And although Ganguly was still following Kohli on that social-media website, up until Sunday, had unfollowed the India batter on Monday.

While there have been no statements made from the two on their act or on those viral videos, the array of incidents surely indicates that none have moved on from the incident that had started in November 2021, beginning with Kohli's removal from ODI captaincy. It led to a war of words between the two via media interactions and eventually led to Kohli stepping down from Test captaincy in January 2022.