The 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) presentation saw some incredible scenes as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and Virat Kohli lifted the elusive trophy for the first time. Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers were honoured by Kohli and the franchise and were allowed to join the team on the podium.

After Rajat Patidar was handed the trophy by BCCI President Roger Binny and ICC Chairman Jay Shah, he called the team on stage to celebrate the win. Quite expectedly, the trophy was handed to Kohli soon by the RCB players, who kissed the trophy.

However, what followed won hearts as he lifted the trophy with RCB legends Chris Gayle and Ab de Villiers, who had travelled to India to see the match.

Gayle, de Villiers, and Kohli were part of the RCB squad that lost the final in 2011 and 2016. While Kohli's status as the franchise's greatest ever player is certified, it is hard to argue against de Villiers and Gayle being next on the list.

Both Gayle and de Villiers joined RCB in 2011. While Gayle stayed with them till 2017, de Villiers was part of their camp till his retirement in 2021.

Earlier, de Villiers and Kohli rushed to the field as soon as RCB completed the victory and shared heartfelt hugs with Kohli. The ex-RCB star hailed the South African and West Indies stars and claimed it felt 10 times more special to win the title with them being in the stadium.

“For me, why it is so special that I get to share it with these two (Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers) is because I’ve shared my prime years with them and I know how much we tried to win this and we felt we were so close couple of times. We were such a good team and we had that explosiveness in our team but we could never cross the line and all of us have that hurt because we gave our prime years to this franchise and we really, really — from the bottom of our hearts — wanted to win that title for RCB and I promise you this feels like 10 times more special just because of the fact that these two are standing next to us,” said Kohli in an interaction with Star Sports.

“The title is honestly as much theirs as it’s mine because it’s the connection you see when they come to Bengaluru. It’s not just me. When they come (to the city), you see how people love them and they go absolutely berserk because they know and they appreciate that they’ve given their heart and soul for this team till the time they played here and they deserve it as much as I do I know people are emotional and they can tend to get carried away but these two guys have given it everything as well so it’s equally theirs too,” Kohli added.

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