KL Rahul : Virat Kohli and ABD have shaped me into a good player

Last season, with Chris Gayle on paternity leave, KL Rahul grabbed the opportunity to shine for RCB and ended the IPL season as the third-highest scorer of his side as his team reached the final. Rahul has previously spoken about the influence of De Villiers and Kohli, who have shown him how to play more freely in the shorter format of the game.

“I feel very, very grateful that I've come back to Royal Challengers Bangalore. Obviously, playing at home and being back at Bengaluru where you live gives you that sense of comfort. I think you always perform better when you're at home. To come back here, to share dressing rooms with people you look up to and with your favourite players like AB, Virat and Chris; to be part of the RCB dressing room gives you a lot of confidence when you know there are big names like these three and when the opposition sees them they're already intimidated. So your job becomes easy, you can go and get your job done quietly, get your 50-60 and the opposition won't even know. They're looking at blocking or stopping these big names and they forget to look at the other players.

“So it's good to be part of a team like that and I've learnt a lot from RCB. They've supported me a lot, not just this year but the first couple of years when I just came into IPL. Virat and AB have been really, really good, they've guided me, they've tried to advise and shape me into a good player. They knew that I was good enough to play for the country and I could do well. I just needed a little bit of confidence from players like that and little bit of advice and for them to share their experiences and what they did right when they were going through a lean patch, or when they were getting big runs, so to learn from them did help me a lot,” KL Rahul told Cricbuzz in an exclusive interview.

When asked to pick an innings or a match that has changed him as a batsman, Rahul pointed to his debut Test century in Australia, in what was only his second Test match.

“It has to be the innings in Sydney. It was one of those innings where I really, really had to put everything that I had into the game, all my focus, all my dedication and all my concentration. I had to bring in my best skill, my 'A' game. I was really, really tested in Australia and to come back from the first match and the way I played, to bounce back and score a hundred in Sydney within a week's time, it gave me a lot of confidence. I started believing more in myself. I realised that I had to believe more in myself, go out there and be fearless and the performances will follow if you try to keep things simple,” Rahul said.