Justin Langer reveals that Virat Kohli made him feel like a 'punching bag' during Perth Test

Australian head coach Justin Langer opened up on his side's historic series loss Down Under to India last summer and spoke about how he couldn't express his take on the situation earlier. The Virat Kohli-led side travelled to Australia in the summer of 2018-19 and created history by winning the Border Gavaskar series by a margin of 3-1, following it up with a 2-1 in the ODIs and a 1-1 draw in the T20Is. This was India's first-ever Test series win on Australian soil.

This loss also came on the back of Australia's controversial sandpaper gate incident which led to the suspensions of then-captain Steve Smith and David Warner for a year. Tim Paine succeeded Smith in Tests and both the wicket-keeper batsman and Langer decided not to enrage Virat, who the Australian coach previously referred to as the best batsman in the world.

While Paine did eventually get into a spat with the Indian captain, Langer shunned himself from expressing what he made of Kohli's on-field antics.

In The Test, a recently released docu-series, Langer said,

"I remember that afternoon [feeling] like a punching bag. We can’t fight back because it felt like we had our hands behind our backs and we just had to take it."

The 49-year-old continued,

"You must be feeling the double standards the way their captain is carrying on and we sort of have to be careful. Imagine if we behaved two out of ten [for] that. We were 1-0 down but I felt that day Virat was getting under our skin."

The Perth native also revealed that he asked his men to step up and take on the opposition, but warned that there is a very distinct difference between being abusive and sparking banter.

"There is a difference between abuse and banter. There is no room for abuse. We don’t need to abuse him but there is banter where you stick up for your mate."