Kesrick Williams opens up about notebook incidents with Virat Kohli

Kesrick Williams, the St. Vincent born Caribbean fast bowler, recently talked about the notebook incident that took place between him and Indian captain Virat Kohli, on a video interview uploaded on a YouTube channel going by the name of International Cricket Network 360.

The notebook celebration, which escalated in the Caribbean Premier League game between the Jamaica Tallawahs and Guyana Amazon Warriors after Williams did it after getting Warriors’ Chadwick Walton out during the 15th match of the 2017 edition, only to have been treated to the same several times by Walton after he hit him to all parts of the ground, doing the notebook celebration after hitting every boundary. Walton ended with 84* off 40 as the Warriors comfortably won that game with 9 wickets to spare.

Williams, who unveiled the celebration in front of Kohli after getting him out in the one off T20I between West Indies and India at Sabina Park, said, “Virat Kohli is the first person I did that notebook celebration on in Jamaica. When I did the notebook celebration, I did it because I liked it and I did it for my fans. But Kohli didn’t see it that way. After the game finished, I went to shake his hands, Kohli said good bowling and he walked off. He didn’t walk off rudely. But it was the end of our greeting.”

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Two years later, the two teams met in a T20 series in India. In the first game at Hyderabad, Kohli, much like Chadwick Walton, smashed Williams to all parts and during the course of his innings, also mimicked Williams’ celebration.
“As soon as Mr Virat Kohli walked into bat, he walks straight at me and says, ‘the notebook celebration thing is not going to work here tonight. I’m going to make sure it won’t work’. Seriously! The episode is back from 2017. Every ball I bowled he said something but I simply responded with ‘mate, just shut up and bat. Really, you sound like a child’. But all he heard was ‘can you just bat and shut up’. The part about child and whatever he didn’t hear because I was walking back.” Williams said.

“That’s all I said but he kept talking. In the match he beat me really bad, I got confused, because he got into my head honestly and I kept thinking its alright, he got into my head and that’s why he beat me badly,” he added.

We heard the other side of the story from Kohli himself, right after the now famous 1st T20 International between the two teams ended.
“It’s not the CPL (about Williams’ celebration), it happened to me in Jamaica when he got me out. So I thought I’ll tick a few in the notebook as well, but all good. There were a few words, but smiles at the end. That’s what you want to see. Good competitive cricket but in the end shake hands and give a hi-fi. That’s what cricket is all about. Play it hard but have respect for opponents,” Kohli said in the post-match conference after scoring a scintillating 94* off 50 balls, guiding India to a 6 wicket win.