Ahead of the 2022 IPL season, when Royal Challengers Bengaluru picked Faf du Plessis at the auction, it came with a question from Mike Hesson, RCB's director of cricket. "He was like, would you want to captain RCB?"
Any hesitation de Plessis might have had was dispelled by a message he got soon after from the very man whose job he was taking. "Virat [Kohli] sends me a message and he's like, listen, couldn't be happier to get a better captain to take over from me. Can't wait to get you in.
"There was always respect, but in an instant I felt accepted to step into the shoes."
Kohli's support, du Plessis says, was the difference between "walking into that season crapping myself versus the conviction of I'm experienced, I know I'm a good leader, and I've got the support of the guy."
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But du Plessis was fully cognisant of the responsibility he was inheriting. "I had a conversation with him [Kohli] like, first of all, this job is not possible without you. Your support, if I don't have it, I'm gonna fail 100%. Dramatically. Because it's impossible without your support. You can cut my legs off underneath me with one sentence, and I'm done."
"Let me tell you as a captain, if you lose two games - not even, if you lose one game for RCB - the whole of Bangalore and the whole of India want Virat Kohli to captain," du Plessis said. "And it's not because they don't like you or me. They just want Virat Kohli to captain. So anything that doesn't happen that's a win comes down to: but Virat Kohli must be captain."
Du Plessis said he had no problem with that pressure - "that's the expectation that you want" - but that it would have been much harder to carry on his own. "Imagine if I didn't have that support, how I would have felt in those three years. It would have been the hardest time to deal with that."
Kohli had led the side from 2013 but stepped away after the 2021 season to better manage his workload and focus on his batting, another thing he had in common with du Plessis who had stepped down as South Africa captain in 2020. "At that stage, I was a player coming from captaining someone and then not captaining the team anymore. So I had this fresh perspective that at least I was on the same level with him, now that he's a player."
And despite having no history outside of playing against each other before, this set the foundation of a close friendship between the two players. "I had his support - more than unconditional support - from day one. He just had my back all the time. I would say we [had] always played against each other, but instantly we felt like we had a very, very good friendship. There's no context here to it. There's no background. It was just, like, straight away."
Du Plessis was RCB captain for three seasons, and when he was stood down at the end of the 2023 season, he took away two things from his tenure - Kohli's friendship and his love of luxury watches. "Three years later, I've become the biggest watch guy. And now everyone is saying to me, how do you spend that much money on a watch?
"So I've said this to him, and I've said this publicly: the most expensive relationship of my life has been him. Because he's made me buy watches that I should have never, ever, ever bought."