KL Rahul made his India debut under MS Dhoni in December 2014.
While the right-handed opener made his debut under Dhoni in 2014, he became a force to reckon with under Kohli’s captaincy. With Rohit at the helm currently, Rahul is part of the leadership group and has captained the country on numerous occasions in the former’s absence.
Rahul, who is the captain of Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL, shared different traits of the skipper he played under in international cricket.
“I have been captained by such great leaders, starting with MS Dhoni, while he was playing, you know he was the captain, he was my captain, my first captain. I have seen how he handled the team and his calmness, the things that he does behind the scenes like building a relationship with each person are something that I have learned from him. You know, you need to build a relationship where these boys will fight for you and will be with you. That is something I learned from him," Rahul said in a YouTube Podcast BeerBiceps.
Talking about Kohli, KL Rahul said that the 34-year-old created an environment where the players strived to be the better version of themselves.
“Then Virat Kohli was our leader for six-seven years and the thing is that the Indian team did under him, the stats are there to be seen and it was phenomenal. the passion, the aggression brought in, he set the standard really high, and his way of leading and captaining was like leading from the front and showing the team how to achieve greatness. He did that and we all jumped on board, we got inspired by the things that he was doing and we tried to be a better version of ourselves and that is something that Virat created and gave each player the power or the realisation to do that you don’t have to settle for mediocre. You can push yourself to be better, work on your fitness, work on your diet, and the small things as a team we didn’t pay enough attention to, we started paying attention to all these things and I think the results were under Virat were because of that," he added.
The 31-year-old spoke highly of Rohit, citing that the latter is quite an astute leader who understands the game really well.
“Rohit Sharma, who is like so sharp, as a leader, his strategies, he does a lot of homework before the game, he knows each person’s strengths and what he will do and he’s put under pressure, where you need to attack him or where are the flaws in his technique and like he is really really good at strategies and understanding the game. All these things are the things I have learned from these people," Rahul stated.