Former India player as well as renowned commentator Aakash Chopra has said Virat Kohli’s loyalty towards the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) is one of his defining traits. RCB bought Kohli ahead of the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League. He has played for the franchise since then, smashing 7263 runs, the most in IPL history, at a strike rate of 130.02 in 229 innings as well.

In a video shared on his YouTube channel, Chopra said: “He is royalty for RCB. Loyalty is royalty is what I say. If you are loyal, you are royal, and he is royal because he stuck with one team. It’s not that he never got an offer or was not asked to come into the auction because nothing was happening there (with RCB). He is a mighty player, scores a lot of runs, and breaks batting records year after year but they don’t win. This player doesn’t like losing. However, he kept his loyalty to RCB. He says that until he plays, he will play for them only. You rarely see such a commitment at a franchise level.”

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However, Aakash Chopra observed that Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni are the only two players who have stuck with their original franchises as well, with Dhoni also playing for the Rising Pune Supergiant for a couple of years in between when the Chennai Super Kings were banned from the tournament.

“His aggressive captaincy, especially in Test cricket. He walked the talk. It’s easy to talk about an aggressive brand of cricket but difficult to play that way. For that, you need to play five bowlers, which means there is pressure on the batters. Due to that, India never played more than four bowlers for a long time because the captain is generally a batter. Virat Kohli changed that template. He realized that to win abroad, you just don’t need to score runs but take 20 wickets as well. He was ready to put pressure on himself,” Aakash Chopra concluded.