I felt very thankful – Virat Kohli on winning the 2025 IPL

In IPL 2025, RCB were crowned champions for the first time in their 18-year journey. They defeated Punjab Kings in a high-octane finale; after much back and forth and a solid collective performance, the long wait was over. Of course out of all the players who were a part of the journey, it was Virat Kohli who soaked it all in as if it was the last emotion that he would ever feel.

Talking on Big Basket presents RCB Podcast, Virat Kohli opened up on how special the feeling of lifting the IPL trophy was. He highlighted how the pent-up pressure made the winning moment extremely singular. He also said that such overwhelming the emotions were, even if RCB would have won the IPL trophy before, then the feeling wouldn’t have been close.

Kohli said, “I felt very thankful, and I feel grateful every day of my life, to be honest. I have nothing to complain about. But that night, especially, and I still say it’s very difficult to explain to people in words how I felt in the last four balls of the last over.”

Highlighting the long wait for the trophy, Kohli added, “When you see from the outside what has happened to the franchise, how RCB has been looked at for so many years as a big team, big franchise that’s never won, you know, the almost champions, the ones that have come close but never really won the trophy. And for that pressure to build over so many years, like season after season, and there’s one thing to observe it, and there’s one thing to live it. And I have lived through all of those seasons.”

Expressing the emotions of the triumph, Kohli revealed, “I can with absolute honesty and clarity say that it wouldn’t have been five per cent of the feeling I had, had we won it in the earlier years. And the accumulation of all that stress and all that pressure. And for it to happen after 18 years, there couldn’t have been a better experience for me in my cricketing journey, apart from all the other things that I’ve experienced playing for India as well. This was very, very special.”