AB de Villiers has been in awe of Virat Kohli since ages. Kohli as a batsman and human being always inspires the South African great. Recently in a chat show, he went on to compare Kohli with Roger Federer.
ABDV on Kohli and Smith
In an interaction on ‘Sports Hurricane’ on Instagram Live, de Villiers admitted that it is difficult to compare between two current greats Virat Kohli and Steve Smith. But he termed Kohli as a more natural striker. “It’s a difficult one, but Virat is definitely the more natural ball-striker, there”s no doubt about that.” Then he compared these two with two Tennis greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to describe the special traits both have. “In tennis terms, I’d say he’s more like a (Roger) Federer whereas Smith is like a (Rafael) Nadal. Smith is mentally very strong and figures out a way of scoring runs – he doesn’t look natural, but he ends up writing records and doing amazing things at the crease.”
Former South Africa cricketer further told that Steve Smith is one of the best batters in terms of mentality whereas Kohli is setting a new bar with an example to follow for everyone.
The friendship
The Royal Challengers Bangalore teammate of Virat Kohli also shares a great bonding with the Indian skipper. Recalling the friendship ABDV spoke about Kohli, the human being. “He’s much deeper than just a cricket player…I think most people realise after a while that there’s more to life than just cricket.”
He further added how the two families are pretty close and said, “It’s a good friendship and we always find a way to talk about cricket as well, but 90 per cent of the time we talk about other stuff. It’s refreshing and in the middle of a very intense IPL tournament.”
The Indian Premier League was the platform which worked as a platform for this friendship to boom. While asked about his best friend from the cricket world, ABDV in no time named Kohli but mentioned, “Virat obviously – not only during the IPL, we chat throughout the year, which means it’s different than just the IPL or cricketing friendship.”
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