Kid clicked at India v Aus Test not Anushka-Virat’s son, says cricketer’s sister

Cricketer Virat Kohli returned to form in a roaring fashion as he scored his comeback century in the recently concluded India-Australia Test match at Perth. His wife, actor Anushka Sharma, was at the Optus Stadium and was spotted cheering her husband from the stands on days 2 and 3 of the game. However, some pictures of a child held by someone in the same enclosure also went viral on Sunday. Many claimed this was Anushka and Virat’s son Akaay Kohli, who had ‘also come to cheer VK’. The cricketer’s sister has now broken her silence on this. (Also read: Anushka Sharma can’t stop beaming as Virat Kohli blows her a kiss after comeback century in India vs Australia Test)
In a post on her Instagram Stories, Bhawna Kohli Dhingra clarified that the child was not Akaay but the daughter of a friend of theirs. She wrote, “I have been seeing Virat and Anushka’s friend’s daughter being mistaken for Akaay on social media. The child in the picture is not our Akaay.” A source close to the couple also confirmed this to HT.
Earlier, Virat Kohli fan clubs and several cricket pages shared pictures and screengrabs of the child, claiming that he was ‘Junior Kohli’. “Junior Virat came to the stadium to support Papa,” read the caption of one such post. Other posts compared the photo of the child to a young Virat, saying that ‘Akaay is VK’s carbon copy’.
Akaay was born in February 2024 and is Anushka and Virat’s second child, after their three-year-old daughter Vamika. The couple has refrained from sharing pictures of their two children’s faces on social media. They have also requested paparazzi and press photographers not to click on their children, requesting privacy. Anytime Virat or Anushka posts pictures of their children, they hide their faces.
Controversy erupted in January 2022 after a live broadcast of a game between India and South Africa briefly showed Vamika’s face. The toddler had accompanied Anushka to the ground as Virat played. After Anushka reacted angrily to the ‘breach of privacy’ on her social media, the official broadcaster apologised for the lapse.
Anushka and Virat have been married since 2018. The actor was last seen on the big screen in the 2018 release Zero. She will next be seen in Chakda Xpress, the official biopic of cricketer Jhulan Goswami. The film is slated to be released on Netflix but no release date has been announced yet