Virat Kohli has been playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) ever since the inception of IPL in 2008. He has represented the Bangalore-based franchise in 177 games so far, amassing 5412 runs at an average of 37.85, including five tons.

See Also: "Proper Session, Great Recovery"; Virat Kohli shares his post-training photos

However, RCB are yet to win an IPL title with Kohli at the helm of affairs.  Under his captaincy, the franchise has failed to qualify for the play-offs in the last three seasons. While the captain had an extraordinary year with the bat, smashing four centuries in IPL 2016 wherein they reached the final, RCB finished 8th, 6th and 8th in the eight-team table in the subsequent editions.

Despite not getting his hands on the IPL trophy, Virat has never thought of leaving RCB.

“It has been 12 years. It is such an amazing journey, so surreal. For a lot of people, it’s all about obvious we want to achieve the ultimate goal for the RCB. We have come close thrice but haven’t made it,” Kohli said in a video posted by RCB’s Twitter handle. “That’s always gonna be our dream together and I was just thinking there is no way in any scenario that I can ever think of leaving this team, because of the love and care, the franchise has shown.

“You can feel emotional about the season going well or not but to have that loyalty with Bangalore, with RCB its quite surreal. Till the time I play IPL, regardless of how we play, I’ll never leave this team.”

After a lengthy COVID-19 hiatus, Virat Kohli had his first net session last week and fared better than he expected.

“Five months (back) is the last time when I had a net session. So, we had a net session in India when South Africa was here but we could not play the match in Dharamshala because it was raining. Then we got to Lucknow and then we had to come back,” he remarked. “So, the last session which was five months ago, honestly I did not feel like that. You are just ready to be moving and mobile on the field and then the instincts kick in.”