Virat Kohli on Boucher’s impact on him in his younger days during their time together in the first IPL season way back in 2008.
Virat Kohli on Boucher’s impact after a sharing a dressing room together.
Mark Boucher of South Africa had the most influence on a young Virat Kohli when he initially arrived at Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in 2008, in a dressing room full of Indian greats like Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble.
Kohli claimed that Boucher “stunned him” with the talks he had with him in an interview with RCB’s Bold and Beyond podcast. Without being asked, Boucher identified Kohli’s areas of weakness and collaborated with him to address them.
“Out of all the players that I played with initially, Mark Boucher had the biggest impact on me as a young kid,” Kohli said. “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’.
“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.”
Although Kohli was aware that he wasn’t the “most technically sound” hitter, his desire to go better and his ability to compete in the middle helped him step up his game. His next significant opportunity came when Yuvraj Singh was called up right before India’s opening match against Pakistan in Centurion after suffering an injury before to the 2009 Champions Trophy.
“That was my first India-Pakistan game. I scored about 16. I tried to hit Shahid Afridi for a six straight down the ground and got caught at long-on [long-off], and we lost that game. It was an important moment in the game. And my heart was beating so fast through the whole innings. I could not process everything that happened within those four days.
“It was a big loss, and I just could not sleep. I was awake till five in the morning, staring at the ceiling. I was like, ‘This is it. I’ve been called after a year and I’ve just messed it all up. I don’t know how this is going to shape up.’ I had a lot of moments like that where I really, really doubted myself and I had to again kind of recalibrate and find a way to slowly build up again.”