Kohli to co-own IPTL franchise team UAE Royals

The legendary batsman Sachin Tendulkar took to Twitter to express his desire to play for UAE Royals (team co-owned by Virat Kohli in IPTL), but the Indian Test skipper was quick to turn down his request in a nice way.

“I have always followed tennis with great interest and today I am glad to be part of a professional tennis league team”, Kohli told the media.

In order to choose the players for each team, says Neelesh Bhatnagar, co-owner of UAE Royals, “there was a draft where all of the team owners were sitting and they had a chance to pick players one by one in rotation.

He is close to Kohli and has been working with the youngsters in the Indian team”, Bhupathi said. Indian cricket team fans and the Sachin Tendulkar fans across the globe have been found retweeting their friendly tweets where the legendary player asks permit from the current vice-captain of Indian team to play for the nation.

“UAE has tremendous tennis following and we are excited to be back in the country with the second edition of the IPTL”. The 34-year-old will be joined by the likes of 2001 Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic, 2008 French Open women’s singles victor and No 7 Ana Ivanovic, doubles veteran Daniel Nestor in the team. He spared no moment in flaunting his bossy attitude and replied to Sachin’s request in the healthiest way possible.

The tournament is into its second edition and it is scheduled to start from December 2, 2015. Kohli added, “I couldn’t miss the opportunity to work closely with him”. A notable absentee from this year’s roster is Andy Murray, who was part of the Manila Mavericks last year. Taking it to the cities that don’t see tennis is a big bonus. It was the inaugural season and we were looking at how it was going to be. We cricketers have that privilege because we play a team sport. During the course of the three weeks, the league will also make stops in the Philippines (December 6-8), India (December 10-12) and Dubai (December 14-16).