Delhi: After the 5 Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series in Australia, more was written about Virat Kohli's struggles with the bat than perhaps about any other aspect of Team India's game. With this series, once again the talk of star cricketers playing in domestic trophy matches gained momentum and now a few days of leisure from international cricket was forcing them to play in Ranji Trophy.

In the same environment, there was a big buzz that 36 year old Virat Kohli would play for Delhi in the Ranji match against Saurashtra in Rajkot but a 'neck problem' prevented him from playing. Now, however, Virat himself has said that he will play in the match against Railways (the match starts from January 30). This is not just a news, it is a preparation for the most talked about event of Indian cricket. Note that Virat made his Ranji debut against Tamil Nadu in 2006 but has played only 23 matches for Delhi so far (record: 1574 runs at an average of 50.77).

After all, what happened that Virat played so little for Delhi and the truth is that not even a single match since November 2012. So this means that Delhi's Ranji match against Uttar Pradesh in November 2012 in Ghaziabad was the last domestic first-class match in which Virat played.

Wouldn't you like to know what happened in Virat Kohli's 'last' Ranji Trophy match? The most special thing is that Uttar Pradesh had won this match by 6 wickets, and that too when at that time not only India's Test openers Virender Sehwag (captain) and Gautam Gambhir, but also Virat Kohli, Ashish Nehra, Unmukt Chand And Ishant Sharma was also in the Delhi team. UP also had Praveen Kumar, Bhuvi i.e. Bhuvneshwar Kumar (who had not made his Test debut till then), Mohammad Kaif and Suresh Raina, who was recently dropped from the Test team. Virat had scored 14 and 43 in the match. Virat was dismissed in both the innings by the same Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who is now his teammate in RCB.

The match was in the Nehru Stadium in Ghaziabad where there were neither proper dressing rooms nor press boxes. About 25 reporters were crammed into a small shed and everyone wrote a lot about this poor arrangement but it was of no use. Even then the surprise was that several thousand spectators were in the stadium every day of the 4-day match. Matches played 2–5 November 2012. Interestingly, Virat Kohli's 24th birthday was celebrated on the last day of the match and the host cricket association had arranged for a cake.

The tide of the match turned from the second day when Uttar Pradesh, playing only his second first-class match, scored 403 runs thanks to a brilliant inning of 116 runs by Mukul Dagar and took a lead of 168 runs over Delhi (235) in the first innings. There was a lot of criticism for this poor cricket of Delhi. In such a situation, despite not being completely fit, Virender Sehwag scored 100 in the second innings but the team scored only 322 runs. Even though Delhi batted slowly and wasted time, they could not stop Uttar Pradesh from achieving the target of 155 runs to win.