BENGALURU: It was about 1.30pm on a humid Friday afternoon in Bengaluru. Unlike the previous evening, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium entrance was a lot less crowded when the Royal Challengers Bengaluru team bus entered the venue on the eve of the clash against Kolkata Knight Riders — the one that heralds the resumption of 2025 Indian Premier League.
Maybe the fans who wanted to get a glimpse of their cricketing hero Virat Kohli brought traffic to a standstill on Cubbon Road late on Thursday evening, did not know that RCB were training in the afternoon. For a while, it did seem like they would not miss their idol as it turned out to be an optional training session on Friday. Not everyone took the team bus including the recently-retired former India Test captain Kohli.
Throughout this week, right from the time Kohli shared his Test retirement on Instagram, he has been the biggest talking point. As soon as it was announced that the IPL will resume with a RCB versus KKR game at the here, social media was flooded with posts of fans egging on each other to turn up for the venue in whites, donning Kohli’s No 18 on the back as a tribute to the most successful Test captain India has ever had. The superstar who has carved the identity for the franchise is after all the only player to represent the same team in all 18 seasons of the IPL.
Kohli, in many ways, has been the singular identity for the team for more than 12 years now. It did not matter who the captain was — Faf du Plessis in the past to Rajat Patidar in this season — Kohli is at the front and centre when it comes to RCB.
It did feel a little bit different as the RCB batters finished their stints one after another on Friday. A little over an hour into the training session, when it seemed like the majority of the practice was over, Kohli walked into the arena. Donning his sunglasses, with a red kit bag over his shoulder, he came in, did a bit of warm-ups before getting padded up and waited for his turn. Around 3.40pm, having paired up with Jitesh Sharma, he hit the nets with Jitesh Sharma.
Kohli’s first hit looked a lot like a warm-up session. A bunch of on-the-up drives and flicks with a bat that did not have a sponsor sticker. Just as he got going, the DJ, almost as if they sensed the presence of the superstar in the middle, blasted the speakers with the RCB team song. Perhaps, they were just doing the routine rehearsal checks, but Kohli was not impressed. He was out in the middle to concentrate and get ready for what will be his first game after announcing the Test retirement. It will be the first game since the IPL was suspended for one week last Friday. Kohli wanted to be in his zone as RCB, currently second on the table with 16 points from 11 games, would be looking to finish in the top two.
Kohli pulled out and waited as everyone on the field were signalling around the ground to stop the music. As the sound stopped, Kohli got back in the middle. He went on to have a hit for another half hour or so before walking off the field.
While Indian cricket and its fans are running high on emotions over the last week, with Rohit Sharma and Kohli retiring from the longest format, the former India captain has kept his business as usual. RCB Director of Cricket Mo Bobat gave a peek into how Kohli has been since getting back into the dressing room after the retirement decision. “There's enough of the public and the nation's attention on him, he doesn't want any more of that. He just wants to get on with his business,” Bo Babat. “He is usually ambitious about what we can achieve this year with RCB and that's what he does. I would like to say though that he should be incredibly proud of what he's done as a test player for India. RCB as a franchise, we are all incredibly proud of what every one of our players does in India this year, but in particular him. I'm sure the fans will show him lots of love this week when they see him again. Just to go back to where I started, he's business as usual, we all are. He's spoken to a few of us about things in the last few weeks, but you know what he's like, he's pretty clear on what he wants to do,” he added.
It remains to be seen whether the fans would turn up in whites on Saturday. As for the man himself, much like he has done throughout his career, Kohli would be walking out with one purpose — do everything he can to win the match for Royal Challengers Bengaluru.