Indian batsman Virat Kohli has praised the positive influence of former Proteas head coach Mark Boucher in the Indian Premier League.
Kohli and Boucher were team-mates at the Royal Challengers Bangalore from the first edition of the IPL in 2008 to the third in 2010.
While Kohli continues to play for RCB, Boucher has since held coaching roles with South Africa in international cricket and the Mumbai Indians in the IPL.
“Out of all the players that I played with initially, Mark Boucher had the biggest impact on me as a young kid,” Kohli told RCB’s podcast Bold and Beyond.
“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.”
Mark Boucher.
Kohli is the leading run-scorer in the history of the IPL and, currently, the top scorer in this year’s edition.
“I started becoming better. I remember a game we were playing in Chennai or Kolkata, and Boucher 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,” added Kohli.
“And that really pushed me in the direction where I said I needed to start looking at how I could keep becoming better.”