Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) captain Virat Kohli said that he “pretty scared” to hit the nets after five months. But he admitted that their first training session ahead of the upcoming edition of the Indian Premier League in UAE went “better than I thought”.

“(It went) much better than expected, to be honest. I was pretty scared. I hadn’t picked up a bat for five months, but yeah it came out better than I thought, to be honest,” Kohli was quoted as saying by the RCB’s website.

Kohli and a few other RCB players resumed training after a five-month coronavirus-forced hiatus on Saturday in UAE where the 13th season of the IPL will be played from September 19 to November 10.

South African pace great Dale Steyn and RCB team director Mike Hesson also attended the session.

“I’ve trained quite a bit during the lockdown, so I’m feeling quite fit and that helps. Because the body is light and you react better, I feel like I have more time on the ball. That’s a big plus,” he said.

“Otherwise you come heavier into the season, the body isn’t moving as much, and it starts playing on mind, but yeah, as I said it went much better than I expected.”

Besides Kohli, the spin trio of Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar and Shahbaz Nadeem and a few fast bowlers also trained and Kohli was pleased with the way they went about the paces in the first session.

“The spinners looked pretty good for day one, they pitched the ball in consistent areas for long enough,” said Kohli, whose last assignment was the two-match Test series against New Zealand in early March.

“Shahbaz was good, Washy (Washington) was very good, I saw Chahal bowl well too. The seamers went through their motions a little bit. All in all, a decent start to our camp.”

RCB arrived in Dubai last week ahead of the 13th edition of the IPL which is scheduled to begin on September 19 in the UAE.

The 2020 season of the IPL will be played for 53 days across three venues in the UAE — Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Dubai.

The final match will be played on a Tuesday, to make it the first-ever IPL to have its final on a weekday. The matches this season will also start 30 minutes before their original time of 4 PM and 8 PM.

The IPL 2020, which was scheduled to be played from March 29 this year, was earlier postponed to April 15 before it was suspended again due to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With IANS inputs