AB de Villiers Ranks Kohli Above Tendulkar and Cricket Loses Its Mind: 'Pass The Weed, Brother'

The verdict that broke the internet

AB de Villiers has poured petrol on cricket's most sacred debate, declaring that Virat Kohli sits above Sachin Tendulkar in his personal pecking order of Indian batting greatness. It is the kind of take guaranteed to detonate on Indian cricket Twitter, and it has done exactly that, with the reaction arguably bigger than the original claim.

An unnamed former India cricketer did not hold back, mocking de Villiers with the now-viral line 'pass on the weed, brother', a jab that has been picked up and run by multiple major outlets within hours. The suggestion is blunt: only something mind-altering could explain putting Kohli, for all his brilliance, ahead of Tendulkar, the man who spent 24 years rewriting the record books and remains, for most of India, untouchable.

Why this one cuts deep

De Villiers is no outsider lobbing hot takes for clicks. He played alongside Kohli for years at Royal Challengers Bangalore, has a genuine and well-documented friendship with him, and has watched his career at close quarters through the peak years of Kohli's dominance across formats. Reports suggest his reasoning leans on 'logic over emotion', essentially an argument built on modern-era numbers, match-winning impact and the sheer weight of expectation Kohli carried as captain, rather than pure sentiment.

But sentiment is precisely what the Tendulkar-Kohli question runs on in India. Tendulkar is not just a batting average and a run tally, he is a cultural institution, the man who carried a billion expectations before Kohli was even in the India set-up. Any suggestion that Kohli has surpassed him, especially from a respected outsider like de Villiers, was always going to provoke exactly this kind of furious pushback.

What happens next

Don't expect this to die down quickly. These GOAT debates never do in Indian cricket, and with Kohli's own career now well past its explosive peak and increasingly scrutinised for its white-ball form and longevity questions, any external validation of his legacy becomes instant ammunition for both his defenders and his critics. De Villiers is unlikely to walk the comment back given his history of being unafraid to needle Indian cricket's sacred cows, and further reaction from other former players and pundits is almost certain to follow as the clip and quote continue to circulate. For now, the scoreboard reads: de Villiers 1, internet outrage several million.