{"id":692521,"date":"2026-05-25T01:17:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T01:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692521\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T01:17:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T01:17:11","slug":"travis-head-and-wife-jess-cop-social-media-abuse-after-on-field-incident-with-indias-virat-kohli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692521\/","title":{"rendered":"Travis Head and wife Jess cop social media abuse after on-field incident with India’s Virat Kohli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian cricketer Travis Head and his wife, Jess Head, have had their Instagram accounts blasted with vile comments after a series of tense on-field exchanges between Head and Indian star Virat Kohli during an Indian Premier League match last week.<\/p>\n

While it is unknown what was said between the pair, Kohli refused to shake hands with Head after the match between Head’s Sunrisers Hyderabad<\/a> and Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru last Friday.<\/p>\n

Although the Royal Challengers lost the match, they scored enough to end on top of the league stage of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Some of the comments on Travis Head’s Instagram posts, including one of his wedding to Jess Head, include threats against his wife and his mother.<\/p>\n

Indian Australian sports journalist and commentator Bharat Sundaresan<\/a> said the comments were prompted by Kohli’s snub but escalated by the former Indian captain’s fans.<\/p>\n

“That wasn’t great behaviour from Virat Kohli to start with, but then the evil forces of social media took over, as they do these days,” Sundaresan said.<\/p>\n

“It’s always been pretty wild fandom for cricket in India, and especially around certain cricketers, but it’s become more tribalistic than ever before these days.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A photo of their family reuniting in India that Jess Head posted on Instagram on April 29 and Travis Head shared as a story on Sunday. (Instagram: Jess Head)<\/p>\n

Sundaresan said he had spoken with Head who “was fine”.<\/p>\n

“You can’t do much about it,” Sundaresan said.<\/p>\n

“You can either stay away from it in terms of not responding to anyone and I think that’s something I would advise to anyone \u2026 do not respond to any of it.”<\/p>\n

“It is almost like if you are an international cricketer these days or sportsperson anywhere in the world, you just need some days away from social media and a day where you had a spat with Virat Kohli is definitely one of them,” he said.<\/p>\n

Call for ‘kindness and support’<\/p>\n

Virat Kohli has 273 million followers on Instagram, while Travis Head has more than 1 million.<\/p>\n

Jess Head is also prominent on the social media site.<\/p>\n

She runs her own public relations company, called Helix PR, which launched last year.<\/p>\n

She told Adelaide’s The Advertiser newspaper people should think about the impact their social media comments had, particularly on those outside of the limelight.<\/p>\n

“I think across all sports at the moment there’s an important conversation around mental health, perspective and the way we speak to one another,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Passion will always be part of sport, but so is remembering there are real people and families behind the game. Hopefully this encourages more kindness, and support for one another.”<\/p>\n

Head and his family also copped abuse in 2023, after he top-scored in Australia’s ODI World Cup final win against India<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian cricketer Travis Head and his wife, Jess Head, have had their Instagram accounts blasted with vile comments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[7814,3443,64,63,740,1202,13848,337911,36767,85,337912,91929,44867,2131],"class_list":["post-692521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-abuse","tag-adelaide","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-instagram","tag-ipl","tag-jess-head","tag-sa","tag-sports","tag-srh--rcb","tag-sunrisers-hyderabad","tag-travis-head","tag-virat-kohli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}