HE’S by no means a shrinking violet but the Virat Kohli of today is a mellower character than the one that introduced himself to Australian crowds nearly seven years ago.

Touring the country as a Test player for the first time in 2011-12, Kohli got himself in trouble with a regrettable interaction with the crowd at the Sydney Cricket Ground that left him pleading with match officials not to ban him.

A rookie still largely unproven against the red-ball, he’d shown the crowd his middle finger – an action he defended at the time but seemingly regrets now.

“The match referee [Ranjan Madugalle] called me to his room the next day and I’m like, ‘what’s wrong?’,” Kohli told Wisden in a rare one-on-one interview. “He said, ‘what happened at the boundary yesterday?’. I said, ‘nothing, it was a bit of banter.’

“Then he threw the newspaper in front of me and there was this big image of me flicking on the front page and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, please don’t ban me!.”

The future India captain escaped suspension and was fined 50 per cent of his match fee after pleading guilty to a level two charge.

“I got away with that one. He was a nice guy, he understood I was young and these things happen. I really laugh at a lot of the things I did when I was younger but I’m proud that I did not change my ways because I was always going to be who I am and not change for the world or anyone else. I was pretty happy with who I was.”

Given his average at that point in his career – he had played seven Test - sat at a rather modest 21.27, a suspension could have sent him back years in terms of career progression.

He posted scores of 44 and 75 in the next Test at the WACA before notching his maiden Test century at Adelaide Oval. And as they say, the rest is history.