LSG vs RCB IPL 2022 Eliminator: Virat Kohli genuinely cares about younger cricketers, says Mike Hesson

Virat Kohli will look to go one better than IPL 2021 after striking form in the last league match by scoring 73 in a comprehensive RCB win.

Royal Challengers Bangalore will taken on KL Rahul’s Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL 2022 Eliminator clash at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Wednesday (May 25). A win on Wednesday will help either of the two sides in booking a place in Qualifier 2, where they will take on Rajasthan Royals for a chance to reach the IPL 2022 final on May 29.

Former captain Virat Kohli is on familiar turf as he guided RCB to the IPL 2021 Playoffs as well but failed to progress beyond the Eliminator, where they lost to Kolkata Knight Riders. Kohli will look to go one better after striking form in the last league match by scoring 73 in a comprehensive RCB win.

RCB Director of Cricket Mike Hesson has revealed that Kohli has played a big role in building a great team culture although Faf du Plessis is the captain of the side.

“Faf’s been great, once we decided who was going to be captain and he was made aware of that, it was certainly not all about him putting a stamp on it, but coming in and contributing to the culture, and the word culture is often overused and often it's based around performance. So, people go, ‘oh they’ve won, so they must have a great culture, for me, the culture happens first, it’s something that is quite hard to define, it’s more about how you react under pressure, how you react to your team-mates and Faf is big on that. He is big on creating a legacy as well in terms of we have actually got to set things in place for the next 3 years and hopefully beyond,” Hesson was quoted as saying on RCB’s Bold Diaries.

“Virat is obviously a key part of that, being our ex-Captain, and such an influential character, but he also brought a whole lot of senior players for the ride that he can engage with. All the young guys love him because he cares, actually genuinely talks and sit to have breakfast with them, gets to know them, sits them by the pool, whatever it is to actually build that group and he does that organically, it’s not fake, it’s quite a natural way with how he deals with people,” Hesson said about Kohli.