KL Rahul acknowledged that it would have been great for him to play for RCB in the IPL as a Karnataka player. Rahul played for several teams over the past ten years after making his IPL debut in 2013 with RCB. Speaking on R Ashwin’s YouTube channel, Rahul mentioned how much he loves Chinnaswamy Stadium and referred to it as his home ground.
Before coming back to Royal Challengers Bengaluru, KL Rahul played for SRH in 2014 and 2015 after beginning his T20 career with RCB in 2013. But was made available by the team in the IPL 2018 mega auctions. Both experts and fans did not take the decision of the franchise too kindly, claiming RCB lost out on one of the Indian team’s most important hitters.
“You can never change the fact that I am a Karnataka player, I am from Bengaluru. KCA is my home, Chinnaswamy Stadium is my home first and then IPL is happening. Everyone wants to play for their home state or their home city and since I am from Bengaluru, playing for Bengaluru would have been ideal,” Rahul said on Ashwin’s show.
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The LSG captain however realized that this is not how the league operates, as very few players are able to play for the same team as their home state. He also used Virat Kohli, who is from Delhi and plays for Bengaluru, and MS Dhoni, who is from Ranchi and plays for Chennai in the Indian Premier League, as examples.
“Like I said, when I started thinking or dreaming of IPL and T20 cricket, by then this was already a set thing that the players would move around. Like, even from the first season, Virat was from Delhi and Mahi bhai is from Jharkhand, Ranchi, he plays for CSK. So that had already happened. So growing up, we felt that it was a huge change,” KL Rahul said.
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