Pakistan wicketkeeper-batter, Mohammad Rizwan, recalled his first meeting with India’s batting star Virat Kohli during the India-Pakistan match in the T20 World Cup 2021 in Dubai.

Meanwhile, Rizwan has just won the hearts of cricket fans by referring to Kohli and other cricketers like Joe Root and Steve Smith as "our Virat Kohli" and so on. He said that they were all like a family.

Rizwan said on the YouTube show Cricket Baaz with Waheed Khan: “It was the first time I was meeting Kohli. The kind of things I had heard about him… like other players told me 'Virat is aggressive and all'. But the way he met me before and after the match, it was amazing. If I said 'he is our Virat Kohli', it's because we all are a family. Obviously, when we enter the ground, no one is a star.”

He added, “There we have no brotherhood or anything of that sort. But outside the field, when we met Kohli, and some of our players also met MS Dhoni, we met with a lot of love and affection. Nothing was different.”

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Rizwan told Cricwick: “We are like a family. If I say 'our Virat Kohli', then I will not be wrong. Or 'our Pujara', 'our Smith' or 'our Root', because we all are one family.”

The Pakistani star also opened up about his camaraderie with Cheteshwar Pujara. Notably, Pujara and Rizwan recently played together for Sussex in the County Championship 2022 in England.

He signed off by saying, “Even in County cricket, where Pujara is with me, believe me, we live with so much love. In fact, I am the one who keeps bugging him, call him out. He keeps laughing. Similarly, it was same with Virat Kohli as well. When I met him the first time, it was with a lot of love and affection.”