Virat Kohli got a controversial leg-before dismissal during the second Test match of the 2022/23 Border-Gavaskar Trophy to become Matt Kuhnemann’s first Test wicket.
Australia rode on Usman Khawaja’s 81 and Peter Handscomb’s unbeaten 72 to post 263 on the first day of the Delhi Test match as Mohammed Shami (4-60), R Ashwin (3-57), and Ravindra Jadeja (3-68) shared the wickets.
India, 21-0 overnight, reached 46-0 before a quick burst from Nathan Lyon reduced them to 66-4. Kohli and Jadeja saw India to 88-4 at lunch. They were 125 when Todd Murphy trapped Jadeja (26) leg-before, and Kohli and KS Bharat stretched the score to 136-5.
Flown in as replacement for Mitchell Swepson, Kuhnemann ended up opening bowling with captain Pat Cummins on debut. Now he bowled an arm ball that held its line and hit Kohli on the front pad as he had tried to smother the ball.
Kohli reviewed after Nitin Menon ruled him out. Kohli had stretched his bat next to his pad, which made things difficult for TV umpire Richard Illingworth. The spike on the UltraEdge revealed an edge, but it was not immediately evident whether the ball had hit the bat before the pad.
It took Illingworth a long time and several replays to determine that the ball had hit Kohli on the pad first, before going on to take the inside edge and hitting the pad a second time. That done, Illingworth referred to HawkEye, and ruled Kohli out leg-before.
Lyon snared KS Bharat shortly afterwards to become the third bowler, after James Anderson and Muttiah Muralitharan, to take a hundred Test wickets against India as well as the third, after Anil Kumble and Ashwin, to a hundred wickets in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
At the time of writing, India are 170-7 with Axar Patel (20*) and Ashwin (10*) at the crease. They trail by 93 runs. Kohli’s 44 is the highest score of the Indian innings.