Indian batter KL Rahul recalled his debut season in the Indian Premier League 2013, when he played with the likes of AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and Zaheer Khan for RCB. Rahul said he tried his best to learn from the quartet and tried to observe how they went about their business.

The Karnataka batter revealed Virat Kohli was always welcoming and never had any kind of arrogance despite being a superstar. Rahul played only five matches in that season of the tournament, scoring only 20 runs in two innings.

Rahul said in a conversation with Kevin Pietersen on Switch YouTube Channel, “I think I was 21. I think IPL really was the first time where I actually saw my heroes and people who had done wonderful things in international cricket. Played with Chris Gayle, Ab de Villiers, and Virat Kohli, Zaheer Khan, all of these guys in the RCB team and that was my first time where I could actually see people and see my heroes and go, okay, this is what they do and this is what they’ve done to get to where they are.”

“Yeah, so with Virat, from the moment I met him, he was very, very welcoming, and he never had that arrogance about him being a superstar,” he added.

The flamboyant batter revealed he tried to have conversations with AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle regarding their strengths.

“And just using those two months, though I didn’t get many games, I was just watching everything that they did on the field and off the field, like training, and I spoke to Virat about training, AB about skills and how can I get better, Chris about power hitting, and just all the stuff with whoever I could pick on, whatever I could pick on, I was like a sponge for those two months and just took on everything and then I went back and I was like, okay, this is what I need to do to probably go a couple of steps higher, play international cricket.”

Rahul will be next seen in action while playing for Delhi Capitals in IPL 2026.