Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni to go up against Ranbir Kapoor and Abhishek Bachchan in charity football match
A charity football match on 4th June will see the biggest stars from the world of Bollywood and Indian cricket descend on Mumbai. Abhishek Bachchan will lead an All Stars Football Club against All Hearts Football club, that will include names like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh among others. This match is billed as a ‘revenge match’ as Junior B’s team suffered defeat at the hands of All Hearts Football Club in the last such fixture last year.
The match held at Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in Delhi saw good quality football in which the sportsmen struck 3 goals in the first half to seal the deal. However, the All Stars Football Club picked themselves up to put a belligerent performance in the second half to fire 3 goals but in the end they did not prove enough as the star-studded team of Dhoni took the game with a scoreline that read 4-3.
"Last time the cricketers destroyed us in the first half, but we played well in the second half, finally losing 4-3. But we are going to win this year," said Nishant Mehra, who has taken upon the coaching duties and will also play as a midfielder for the celebrity team. Mehra has previously played for Mumbai FC and is the Technical Director at the club.
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Mehra heaped praise on some players of the opposition when he said, “(Mahendra Singh) Dhoni is extremely quick, his acceleration is unparalleled. He’s always in the squat position on field and is quick with the ball. Virat’s drive to win is spectacular. He is competitive. Also, that the Indian cricket team practices football to stay fit and to warm up is a well-known fact but we have our own strengths too.”
The names that are expected to turn up for the All Stars include Abhishek Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, Sidharth Malhotra, Arjun Kapoor, Dino Morea, Kartik Aryan, Raj Kundra, Shabir Ahluwalia, Karan Wahi, Rohan Shrestha, Vivian Dsena, Nishant Mehra and a few others. For All Hearts, all the big names who featured in the recently concluded Indian Premier League will be in action. Apart from Dhoni and Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, Zaheer Khan, Varun Aaron, Ishant Sharma and Hardik Pandya will also be seen showing off their football skills.
Abhishek Bachchan leads the All stars side while Ranbir Kapoor acts as his deputy. The face-off between the stars of Bollywood and cricketers was conceptualized by director Bunty Walia and attracted a considerable amount of crowd in 2015. With bigger names turning up for the 2016 game, the organizers will expect a bigger turnout