Friday has been all about cricketer Virat Kohli and the girl whose Instagram picture he briefly liked, only to unlike it later. The internet, of course, has had a full-blown meltdown, complete with hilarious throwbacks to Kohli’s 2025 ‘likegate’ involving actor Avneet Kaur. Amid all the buzz, HT City caught up with the woman at the centre of it all, LizLaz, whose picture has now gone viral, for an exclusive chat.
“It was crazy because I woke up and then I was all over the news,” is her first reaction to us, “I don’t even know when he liked the picture, I learnt through the news. So many people found the articles done on me on many different platforms and sent them to me in my DMs. I got so many messages today, people were super excited about it.”
An old clip of LizLaz’s interview to another portal too has been going viral, in which she confesses that she’s a Virat Kohli fan. How did this connection happen?
It was because of an India trip last year. The vlogger and musician visited the country for the first time. She tells us, “One of my best friends is from Bangalore, so I just wanted to visit them. I thought I am going to stay for maybe two weeks and then leave. But then I enjoyed it a lot, so I stayed for many months. I also started traveling around all over South India, Goa, Mysore, even Coorg, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, and then also the north later. And this trip is when I got introduced to cricket as a sport. I didn’t watch it before or anything. I was born in South Africa but brought up in Germany, where the national sport is only football.”
And that’s when she watched Virat play, “It was obviously the IPL last year, so I started watching with my Bangalorean friends. It was contagious. I was also becoming a Royal Challengers Bangalore fan. And obviously, if you support RCB, Virat Kohli is the most exciting player to watch. He’s just so good. So I was happy about him liking the picture.”
Now that Virat has unliked the picture, is it a bit of a dampener? “No, I felt a bit sorry for him actually!,” says Liz to HT, “I was so happy that he liked it, but then him unliking it, I felt a bit bad for him because I don’t even know how it became such a big story. How did people notice, how did they make it news… that was probably not his intention behind it, but still I am grateful for it and I appreciate the support from him.”
The sudden attention is surprising for LizLaz, as are the work opportunities coming her way after the virality, “There have been so many queries. But I am taking my time. I am passionate about music and vlogging. And if I get music opportunities in India, why not? Maybe I will visit again soon. I wish I was there for the IPL this time.”
