Former India captain Virat Kohli on Tuesday recalled the day of the inaugural auction of the Indian Premier League (IPL) back in 2008, talking about the moment he was picked by Royal Challengers Bangalore which he admitted was “an impactful moment” in his life.
Talking on ‘The RCB Podcast’, Kohli talked about following the IPL drafts with his teammates when he was leading the U-19 Indian team during the World Cup in Malaysia in 2008, saying that all had gone crazy after watching the amount for which they had got picked by the franchises.
“We were in Malaysia for the U-19 World Cup and the drafts were happening. The U-19 dynamic was a little different because we very rightly so had a money cap. That was the only time when I saw a restriction on how much you could be picked for if you haven’t played for India, of course. Even that moment for us was very amazing, I remember. The amount that we got picked for when they revealed it, we were like, we couldn’t believe it. We went absolutely crazy,” he said.
As many as 14 players from the winning U-19 team were picked at the auction which included the likes of Kohli, Siddharth Kaul, Ravindra Jadeja, Manish Pandey and many others.
The 33-year-old also revealed about a conversation he had heard that the Delhi franchise was interested to go after him before their team dynamics urged them to pick his teammate Pradeep Sangwan while he joined RCB for 50,000 US$. He admitted that the decision, when looked at in hindsight, was one of the most “impactful moment” in his life which he had realised later.
“There was one conversation from people that Delhi team is interested to go after me but then the dynamic of their squad turned out to be so that they picked Pradeep Sangwan, who was a left-arm seamer, at that time he was our best bowler in the U19 team. So Delhi decided to go with him because they wanted to strengthen their bowling and then RCB picked me which in hindsight I feel was such an impactful moment in my life which I didn’t realise at that time but now when I look back things would have been very different from what they are now and I would not have it any other way than this,” he recalled.
Four years after his stay at the franchise, Kohli was named as the full-time captain of RCB in 2013 and he led the side in 140 matches, winning 66 and losing 70. Despite scoring plethora of runs and breaking umpteen records, he failed to get his hands on the elusive trophy, having reached the final once, in 2016.
In 2021, Kohli stepped down from the role following the UAE-leg of the season. He was retained for the 15th season, along with all-rounder Glenn Maxwell and pacer Mohammed Siraj.
