"Never seen Virat Kohli travel in business class during a flight" - Vivek Razdan opens up on interesting aspect of former India captain's personality
Former India cricketer Vivek Razdan has said that he has never seen ex-India captain Virat Kohli travel in business class during flights.
When cricketers travel during matches, two seats in business class are reserved for the captain and coach respectively. According to Razdan, the star cricketer never used the luxury when he was the skipper and instead always gave his business class seat to one of the bowlers.
Speaking about the 33-year-old’s off-field personality, Razdan said on Sportskeeda’s show SK Tales:
“In a flight, two seats are reserved in business class - one for the captain and one for the coach. But I have never seen Virat Kohli travel in business class during a flight. He always prefers to be with his teammates in the economy class. Apart from the coach, there was always a bowler occupying one of the business class seats. It was either Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami or, sometimes, Ravichandran Ashwin.”
Explaining the former captain’s praiseworthy gesture, the 52-year-old added:
“He felt that since the bowlers worked extremely hard on the ground, so at least for three-four hours, they could relax.”
The 33-year-old quit as T20I and Test captain to focus on his batting, while he was controversially sacked as the one-day skipper by the BCCI.
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Kohli never requested business class seat for Anushka: Vivek Razdan
Narrating another incident regarding the former Indian captain's humble nature, Razdan said that Virat had no qualms traveling in economy class even with wife Anushka Sharma during India’s tour of the West Indies in 2019. The star batter was leading the team on that tour.
Razdan, who was part of the commentary panel, recalled:
“Even when Anushka Sharma joined the West Indies tour of 2019 later, she and Virat traveled together in economy class. Virat never requested for his business class seat to be given to Anushka.”
Kohli is currently going through a prolonged lean patch with the bat. He hasn’t scored an international century since November 2019. He is also struggling for runs in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022.
In eight matches for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), he has scored only 119 runs at an average of 17 and a strike rate of 122.68. In the last two games, he has been dismissed for first-ball ducks.
RCB are currently battling it out with Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Pune in Match 39 of IPL 2022. RR are batting first, having lost the toss. Meanwhile, RCB skipper Faf du Plessis has confirmed that Kohli will open the innings with him when Bangalore come out for the chase.