Team India star KL Rahul opened up about his early stints with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), when he, for the first time ever got to share the same dressing room with Virat Kohli.
IPL 2013 was the debut Indian Premier League season for KL Rahul, who joined RCB in that season. The batter got only a few matches to play but soaked up some priceless lessons from some of the best in the business.
It was dream come true moment for KL Rahul
Joining RCB, Rahul, then one of the best emerging players in India, came to know more about AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Zaheer Khan, and Virat Kohli, who were the heroes for KL Rahul. It was like a dream-come-true moment for him.
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But how was the experience when he met with Kohli for the first time? A portion of cricket fans describe the batting maestro as an arrogant person. But is it true? Rahul stated that the first time he entered into the RCB dressing room, Kohli warmly welcomed him.
KL Rahul talked about Virat Kohli’s ‘ego’
“I think I was 21. I think IPL really was the first time where I actually saw my heroes and people who had done wonderful things in international cricket. “I played with Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli, and Zaheer Khan—all of these guys in the RCB team—and that was my first time where I could actually see people and see my heroes and go, ‘Okay, this is what they do, and this is what they’ve done to get to where they are,'” Rahul said during a conversation with the YouTube channel ‘The Switch.’
“Yeah, so with Virat, from the moment I met him, he was very, very welcoming, and he never had that arrogance about him being a superstar,” he added.
Rahul faced some harsh truth as well
KL Rahul acknowledges the importance of the Indian Premier League as a stage for a young cricketer. He said that he pushed himself hard to get into the tournament, which might have offended a few other players. But Rahul was then a young man on a mission who used to ask AB de Villiers how to improve the performance.
“IPL’s a huge platform, IPL’s a huge opportunity, and yeah, I didn’t want to miss it at all, so I did everything that I could, almost to a point where I was a pain in the a*s for a lot of players, and we were at after-parties and I’d be there. Talking cricket. AB, how can I get better at doing this? Yeah, yeah, I didn’t get it in the beginning, and then some of my teammates had to tell me that, like, ‘Look, boss, relax,'” Rahul said.
Meanwhile, during the IPL 2013 edition, Rahul featured in just five matches for the RCB and scored 20 runs across two innings.
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