Virat Kohli reveals Mark Boucher had 'biggest impact' on him early in his career: 'He really stunned me'

Before making his debut for the Indian team and sharing the dressing room with the legendary Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli got a taste of what it’s like to play the sport at the highest level by featuring in the inaugural season of the Indian Premier League. Kohli, in fact, is one of only two active cricketers who had featured in the very first IPL match, between Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Kolkata Knight Riders at Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium.

It was a huge leap for Kohli to be sharing the dressing room with legends of the game such as Rahul Dravid, who had led RCB in the inaugural season, and Anil Kumble as well as Jacques Kallis and Zaheer Khan.

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The former India and RCB captain, however, recently revealed that it was Mark Boucher who had the most profound impact on him as a player early in his career.

“Out of all the players that I played with initially, Mark Boucher had the biggest impact on me as a young kid. He was the only guy I saw who came with the mindset that ‘Okay, I’m going to come in and help some of the young Indian players’,” Kohli said on RCB’s podcast Bold and Beyond podcast.

Kohli reveals how Boucher pointed out his short-ball weakness

Kohli, who would go on to make his international debut during India’s tour of Sri Lanka shortly after the first IPL season, further revealed how the legendary South African wicketkeeper-batter pointed out his weakness in facing short deliveries and helped him work on it.

“He saw me play and saw a bit of potential. He figured out what my weaknesses could be, like if I wanted to go to the next level, this is what I need to do, without me asking him anything. He said, ‘Okay, I’ve seen you play this and we need to work on this, that, and a couple more things.’ So he took me to the nets, he said, ‘You need to work on the short ball. No one’s going to give you a chance in international cricket if you can’t pull the ball.’

“He was hitting these tennis balls at me at a pace where I was like, if this is what it’s going to take, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the next level. But he really kept at it. I started becoming better. I remember a game we were playing in Chennai or Kolkata, and he told me, ‘When I come to commentate in India in four years from now, if I don’t see you playing for India, you would do a disservice to yourself.’

“He really stunned me with the conversations that he had with me. And that really pushed me in the direction where I said I needed to start looking at how I could keep becoming better,” added Kohli, who would go on to become one of the greatest cricketers of all time and smash numerous records.

Kohli and Boucher would share the RCB dressing room for three seasons from 2008 to 2010, with the latter moving to Kolkata Knight Riders in 2011, which would be his final season in the Indian Premier League. Kohli, on the other hand, remains the only player to have played each season in IPL history for the same team.

Boucher would go on to coach various teams after a freak eye injury in 2012 cut short his playing career, including the Proteas and Mumbai Indians.