'She has spent way more time there than I have' - Virat Kohli reveals Anushka Sharma's 'special connect' with Bengaluru

Former India captain Virat Kohli has opened up on wife Anushka Sharma’s Bangalore connection, stating that she has “spent way more” time in the city than him, while also adding that Anushka is extremely content with the cricketer’s association with the Bangalore-based IPL franchise RCB.

Kohli has been one of the most loyal servants to the league and his IPL team, having expressed in no uncertain terms that “I can’t think of being in any other team than RCB” when he announced his decision to relinquish the captaincy in the middle of the second leg of 2021 IPL in the UAE.

He has been retained by the RCB management ahead of the 2022 mega auction as their first player, providing him with an INR 15 crore retainer fees as per the BCCI-announced pay slabs. Meanwhile, in a recent RCB podcast, Kohli narrated how his association with RCB sits well with his wife as she gets a chance to visit the city with which she has a “special connection”.

“She’s a Bangalore girl. She’s grown up there. She’s spent way more time than I have in Bangalore, not many people know this. And she has a special connection with the city already. So obviously she feels very happy that I am playing for RCB and my commitment is always going to be for this franchise and for this city…,” Kohli said.

“She obviously can feel the sadness when we don’t do well as well. And as I said, there’s a special connect with Bangalore already so for her it was just things coming together in the most perfect manner that I happened to play in the city and she gets to go back to Bangalore and relive her special memories of growing up there. And she absolutely loves it,” he added.

Bengaluru feels like home to me: Virat Kohli

Kohli went on to recall his cricket days as a teenager when he used to have training camps at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore.

“It’s always had a strong impact on my life starting from the time we used to come to Bangalore for the Under-14, Under-15 NCA camps and we used to be there for 2-2.5 months at one stretch so we used to explore quite a bit of Bangalore even then.

“The city has a very different feel to any other place in India. It is just when you arrive, you land at the airport and you are driving to the hotel, you just feel like you’ve come home. That’s a very difficult feeling to get in a city that you haven’t been born and grown up in and you just go there for a period in the year.”