Jacob Duffy marvels at Kohli's down-to-earth nature despite religious-figure status

Jacob Duffy has marvelled at how "down-to-earth" Virat Kohli remains while interacting with fellow players despite being a "religious figure" in India. Duffy shared the dressing room with Kohli while representing Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in IPL 2026 and said he was "really appreciative" of the way the former India captain welcomed him and the other overseas players into the squad.

"I got to see him [Kohli] yesterday," Duffy said during a media interaction on Sunday. "He was in the gym, obviously, so running into him there was cool, but he was awesome to me.

"Obviously, for such a religious figure, I guess you could almost say, in India, he's obviously a megastar over there. For him to be so down-to-earth and sort of welcome all us overseas guys at RCB was pretty cool, so I'm very appreciative of him for that. It'll be awesome to play against him now that I've shared a changing room with him as well."

Duffy will now be hoping to keep his former RCB teammate quiet when New Zealand and India square off in a three-match ODI series starting on November 4 at Eden Park in Auckland. The Kiwi pacer acknowledged that the time spent together in the nets during their stint at RCB means Kohli is well aware of his strengths and methods.

"He's got a great work ethic," Duffy said. "Obviously, I bowled a lot to him in the nets because he was always the first batter and I was always the first bowler. We actually spent a lot of time facing each other in the nets, so that's quite cool. But from that, he's seen a lot of me now too, so he'll be well prepared.

"I guess we talked a lot about fine details. We discussed certain wickets back in India. Some wickets are quite different, so he spoke a lot about the lines and lengths required on those surfaces, how he adjusts, and how he thought I could adjust as well. Little insights like that were quite important coming from him."