Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma

Host: I'll get started by asking you that, three years IPL was in a bubble. You played in the bubble for a long time. Yeah. Must have been very tough.

How does it feel to get back to real cricket with stadium and Chinnaswamy screaming? Virat Kohli: It's, actually the first game seemed unbelievable to me. You know, you almost forget the memory of driving to the stadium with so many people outside the ground.

And this, the one interesting thing, Glenn Maxwell said to me after he saw that, he said, "I know the situation was unbelievably tough and you know, everyone was suffering all over." and we had to continue to play, which was again, for me, quite a difficult period because I was like, this doesn't seem right.

Not because there are not people in the stadiums, but in general, you know, everyone's kind of trying to just get by, and here we're playing a sport. Just felt odd. So when we returned to normal, that's one thing he said.

He said, "I can't believe we played in empty stadiums for so long." Yeah. The fans are the essence of the game, especially seeing the passion of the fans of RCB. IPL always has been a special tournament.

So when I saw those people outside the stadiums and the lead up, I got all the videos of the lead up to the game as well, like the queues for tickets and the frenzy that was in the city. I was buzzing. I was like, I just wanna get to Bangalore.

And when landed as well, when they saw me at the airport, I could just see happiness in their eyes to see me back playing for RCB in Bangalore. So yeah, it was, more like a fairy tale comeback for us. You know, played the perfect game also.

But yeah, just the whole atmosphere was something that I realized that day how special it has been to have all those fans cheer for us for so many years, only because we had a situation where we couldn't see any of them. Yeah. So I had more gratitude and I was very thankful that, I have this opportunity to play in front of such amazing fans.

Host: Was it tough for you to be in the bubble? Personally, it was very tough for me. Not that I like to go out a lot, but just the sense of, not being able to step out from certain places, it was confining me in a way that it wasn't healthy at all.

Plus, there were many things that were happening in the background when it came to cricket with me, which eventually came to the surface later for everyone to know. So no one knew at the time what I'm going through. And in general, I mean, you know, we had our daughter, and just not being able to take her out and show her the world was also very tough on us.

So yeah, the bubble, I don't know how people reacted to it, but personally, I was not in a, in a good space in the bubble.

And after the bubble as well, I realized, not that, as I said, not hanging out every, you know, going for dinners and you know, get-togethers or anything, just the fact that you can go to the lobby area of a hotel and just have a cup of coffee in normalcy. Yeah. Or just sit by the pool and you you see random people around you not, you know, confined spaces.

And it was just like, yeah, you're part of everything. Just that bit was so important, and I realized that later. Yeah, the bubble was very difficult.