“Absolute pain to play against”, De Villiers recalls his early days with Kohli

Former South Africa batter AB de Villiers shares a close relationship with Virat Kohli. Both showed admiration and love for each other in past. Recently after Kohli’s retirement from

Test cricket, AB de Villiers revealed about their initial days and how they became friends at RCB.

AB de Villiers talks about early days with Kohli

On Monday Virat Kohli announced retirement from Test cricket. Now he will be only playing ODI cricket after retiring from both longest and shortest format of the game. Speaking of Kohli, in an ICC video, his close AB de Villiers recalled that it was a “pain to play against” Kohli because of how intensely he competed.

“Virat is like one of my cricketing brothers, someone I really grew fond of when I got to know him better. He’s an absolute pain to play against, so before I knew him I didn’t really like him a lot because he was so good and so competitive, very similar to me with that competitive nature,” De Villiers said in a video on ICC.

He added, “We really like winning and we like to pull our weight within the team environment and if anything threatens that it usually brings out aggressive body language and one that will attack back and that’s exactly what Virat was like playing against.”

IPL days at RCB with Virat Kohli

AB de Villiers said that he became friends with Kohli after he came at Royal Challengers Bangalore. Former South Africa legend said how they became family friends after knowing each other a lot better. “Then I got to know him at RCB, I got to know him a lot better. We became family friends, became brothers and also became great partners at the wicket when we played together, really understood each other out there and I probably enjoyed every second of playing with him,” De Villiers added.

In 2011, De Villiers joined RCB after his initial IPL days with the Delhi Daredevils. The right-handed batter went on to play 11 seasons for RCB before retiring after the 2021 edition of the IPL. During his RCB days, de Villiers and Kohli were the mainstays of RCB batting order. They hold the record for the most runs scored as a pair in IPL history, amassing 3,123 runs from 76 matches, including 10 century partnerships.

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