Before Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) became synonymous with Virat Kohli, the India international’s younger self arrived at the Indian Premier League franchise in 2008, fresh from his U-19 World Cup triumph.
“As a young Indian cricketer, I was obviously looking forward to playing with the Indian legends. I was very nervous about meeting Rahul [Dravid] bhai, Anil [Kumble] bhai, and Zak [Zaheer Khan],” Kohli said on RCB’s Bold and Beyond podcast.
The batter also revealed that he didn’t feel comfortable sharing the same space with the international stars at the time. Yet an overseas player had a big influence on the teenager.
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“Actually, out of all the players I played with initially, Mark Boucher had the biggest impact on me,” Kohli recalled. “He was the only guy I saw who came with the mindset that ‘Okay, I’m going to come in and help some of the young Indian players’.”
‘He stunned me with the conversations’
“He saw me play and saw a bit of potential. He figured out what my weaknesses could be, like if I wanted to go to the next level, this is what I need to do, without me asking him anything,” the 36-year-old said. “He said, ‘Okay, I’ve seen you play this and we need to work on this, that, and a couple more things.’ So he took me to the nets, he said, ‘You need to work on the short ball. No one’s going to give you a chance in international cricket if you can’t pull the ball.’
The South African spent three years at RCB between 2008 and 2010, when the franchise made the final in 2009.
“He was hitting these tennis balls at me at a pace where I was like, if this is what it’s going to take, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the next level. But he really kept at it. I started becoming better. I remember a game we were playing in Chennai or Kolkata, and he told me, ‘When I come to commentate in India in four years from now, if I don’t see you playing for India, you would do a disservice to yourself.’,” he added.
Kohli went on to make his international debut in 2009 playing in an ODI against Sri Lanka.
“He really stunned me with the conversations that he had with me. And that really pushed me in the direction where I said I needed to start looking at how I could keep becoming better,” said Kohli.