Virat Kohli reveals voice note sent by AB de Villiers that made him emotional
AB de Villiers is one player who is badly being missed in the Indian Premier League (IPL) especially in the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) outfit. He was a vital cog in their wheel all these years and certainly, his decision to retire from all forms of cricket left many emotional. Virat Kohli shares a special bond with him and the former RCB captain has now revealed how he came to know about De Villiers’ retirement.
Kohli recalled the moment when AB de Villiers himself told him about quitting the sport through a voice note in a whatsapp chat. The 33-year-old stated that he was emotional after knowing about it.
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“It’s very strange. I clearly remember when he decided to finally call it a day. He sent me a voice note. I still remember we were coming back after the World Cup from Dubai, and I got a voice note. And I opened it and I listened to it. Anushka (Sharma) was with me, and I looked at her like this, and my face fell. She was like ‘What?’ I showed her the message, I showed her the WhatsApp chat and the voice note from AB de Villiers. And the first thing she said was ‘Don’t tell me’. She knew,” he said while speaking on RCB’s official website.
I knew something was coming, says Virat Kohli
AB de Viliers is an IPL legend on his own terms having amassed 5162 runs at an average of almost 40 and a strike-rate of 151.69 in 184 matches. No wonder he is being missed in the IPL 2022. However, Virat Kohli revealed that he had an intuition in IPL 2021 that something was coming given the way De Villiers was speaking nostalgic things with him.
“I kind of had the impression or I kind of was guessing it in the last IPL. Because he kept telling me – our rooms were next to each other, and we would walk the same way and then disperse – and every time I walked to my room, he’d see me outside, he’d be like ‘I wanna see you for coffee one of these days’.
“And I kept getting nervous; I was like ‘I’m not sitting with you, I think there’s something coming,’ and he said ‘No man, there’s nothing. I just wanna sit and have a chat with you, it’s been a while’, and he never speaks like that, we interact all the time. So I knew something’s brewing up,” Kohli said.