IPL 2023: AB de Villiers recalls first meeting with ‘cocky’ Kohli

RCB’s AB de Villiers with Virat Kohli at IPL 2019. Pic/BCCI

Former Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) batter AB de Villiers has revealed that when he met former RCB skipper Virat Kohli for the fist time in 2011, he found him “cocky and arrogant”.

The South African great joined RCB in 2011 and established a strong rapport with Kohli. The duo became the mainstay of RCB’s batting line-up for almost a decade. De Villiers announced his retirement from cricket in November 2022 while Kohli continues to be an essential component of RCB. “I thought he [Kohli] was quite cocky when I met him for the first time. He had this hairstyle going and he was quite flamboyant,” De Villiers said during an interaction with Chris Gayle on an RCB podcast.

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“But the minute I got to know him better as a human, I think he had a barrier around him when I met him for the first time, that barrier opened up. Lots of respect after that first meeting. He is a top man, but my first impression was like ‘woah’,” added De Villiers, who played 144 matches for RCB, scoring close to 5,000 runs. He was recently inducted into RCB’s Hall of Fame and his jersey No. 17 was retired to honour his contributions.

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