Star India batter KL Rahul recently recalled his first meeting with Virat Kohli and opined on his debut IPL season with the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in 2013. During that edition, Rahul played just five matches and scored 20 runs across two innings as well.

On Monday, January 26, Rahul appeared in a video released on the YouTube channel ‘The Switch’ with Kevin Pietersen, where he said: “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. Played with Chris Gayle, Ab de Villiers, and Virat Kohli, 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. 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.”

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However, KL Rahul also shared that during his maiden IPL stint with RCB, he spoke to everyone in the squad, including Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, and Chris Gayle, and tried to learn something from everyone as well.

“And just using those two months, though I didn’t get many games, I was just watching everything that they did on the field and off the field, like training, and I spoke to Virat about training, AB about skills and how can I get better, Chris about power hitting, and just all the stuff with whoever I could pick on, whatever I could pick on, I was like a sponge for those two months and just took on everything and then I went back and I was like, okay, this is what I need to do to probably go a couple of steps higher, play international cricket,” KL Rahul added.

“IPL’s a huge platform, IPL’s a huge opportunity, and yeah, I didn’t wanna 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, look, boss, like, relax,” KL Rahul concluded.