{"id":486978,"date":"2026-03-21T03:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486978\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T03:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:37:09","slug":"virat-kohli-was-a-bit-cocky-ab-de-villiers-makes-honest-admission-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486978\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Virat Kohli was a bit cocky’: AB de Villiers makes honest admission | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'ViratAB de Villiers and Virat Kohli (Image credit: BCCI\/IPL) NEW DELHI: As the cricket world gears up for IPL 2026, one of the tournament\u2019s most iconic “bromances” is back in the spotlight. AB de Villiers<\/a>, the legendary South African batter and former Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) stalwart, has made a candid admission regarding his first impression of former captain Virat Kohli<\/a>.While the duo eventually became the most feared batting pair in T20 history, De Villiers revealed that it wasn’t exactly “friendship at first sight”. Speaking about their early encounters on Mbangwa Media YouTube channel<\/a>, the man known as Mr. 360 confessed that Kohli\u2019s initial demeanour rubbed him the wrong way.\u201cI didn\u2019t initially like him a lot, to be honest. He was a bit cocky, you know, and I\u2019ve told him that before. I\u2019ve said it in many interviews. We sort of laugh at that now,\u201d De Villiers remarked. <\/p>\n

Watch<\/p>\n

Jay Shah calls 2019 to 2026 as Indian cricket’s golden periodHowever, the Proteas legend was quick to clarify that this perceived arrogance was actually a mirror image of his own personality. \u201cWhy I say cocky is because I probably saw a similar kind of thing that I have in him; it\u2019s that competitive drive,” he added. “It\u2019s that thing that you\u2019re born with, that I don\u2019t like losing, nothing is going to change that. So I probably saw that in Virat initially when I met him.\u201dThe ice began to melt as the two spent more time together on the international circuit. De Villiers noted that beneath the aggressive exterior was a cricketer driven by a profound sense of duty to his team.\u201cThen in the second or third meeting, getting to hear his voice and hear him speak, I\u2019m like, oh okay, he\u2019s also just human, you know, just a nice guy who\u2019s got a deep drive of wanting to perform and win games of cricket for his country,\u201d he added.The foundation of their legendary RCB partnership was actually laid during a tense Test match at the Wanderers after RCB picked Kohli. Despite being in the heat of an international battle, Kohli reached out to his future teammate.\u201cAnd I remember in that tunnel, he came up to me, he\u2019s like, \u2018I\u2019m glad you\u2019re on our team.\u2019 And we sort of vibed, like we\u2019re going to be good friends. In the middle of a Test match, we would hardly ever speak to each other, and he just went like, \u2018Yes, I\u2019m so glad we got you.\u2019 I\u2019m like, okay, this guy actually likes me, we can maybe be mates,\u201d De Villiers recalled\"Banner<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli (Image credit: BCCI\/IPL) NEW DELHI: As the cricket world gears up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[23786,1721,172547,172548,17779,17774,172546,24790,47712,101,172545,56,54,55,15624],"class_list":["post-486978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-ab-de-villiers","tag-cricket","tag-cricket-bromance","tag-de-villiers","tag-ipl","tag-ipl-2026","tag-kohli-de-villiers-friendship","tag-rcb","tag-royal-challengers-bengaluru","tag-sports","tag-t20-history","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-virat-kohli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}