The IPL has always had a special magic: it brings together players from different eras and different cricketing nations, allowing them to share spaces they might never have otherwise accessed. For England wicketkeeper-batter Jordan Cox, the opportunity came in the form of a season with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, where he served as the franchise’s regular 12th man and played a meaningful dressing-room role during a title-winning campaign.
Cox may not have featured as a regular match-day starter, but he still spent plenty of time on the field as a substitute and devoted long stretches to training with some of the biggest names in the game. Those sessions included working alongside Virat Kohli, a chance Cox clearly valued far beyond the limited match exposure. Even as critics questioned his choice—particularly after the early part of the County Championship saw him sitting out despite the reported ₹75 lakh pay cheque—Cox defended the decision. “If you haven’t been around this competition, you don’t know what it’s like,” he said after the IPL. “It’s life-changing… Why would you not go over and learn from the best?”
That mindset wasn’t unique to Cox within the RCB camp. Jacob Bethell, another England teammate, also held a similar view and eventually received a handful of chances in RCB colours. Bethell had already become an England white-ball international and was waiting to earn a Test cap, though a pair of untimely injuries delayed that next step. In that context, Cox’s time around a player of Kohli’s stature carried obvious benefits—premium access, as he put it, to someone who was willing to talk cricket at any hour and share details that can be hard to get anywhere else.
Reflecting on his friendship with Kohli, Cox said, “He will give you every single bit of information he has in his brain to try and help you, which for me was something that I didn’t expect… For someone like that who’s achieved everything you’d want to achieve in the game, he gives you everything.”
Time in India also sharpened Cox’s approach to spin, something he felt directly improved his batting. After already enjoying two highly productive seasons for Essex—where he has averaged over 60—he believed it made sense to spend more time in the subcontinent to broaden his game. Cox pointed to the value of batting in the nets with some elite operators, including Kohli, and also spoke about facing Phil Salt, described as the world’s top-ranked T20 batter. The exposure, Cox explained, helped him learn different shot options and different ways to create scoring opportunities. “I’ve been lucky enough to bat with VK a few times in the nets, which has been pretty awesome. Even batting with Salty, someone that’s been the No. 1-ranked T20 batter in the world, to learn different types of shots and types of opportunities to take down bowling: I feel like my game [against] spin has gone to another level now,” Cox said, referring to Salt.
While Test cricket remains the ultimate goal, Cox stressed that playing in the IPL was still a “dream” he couldn’t afford to ignore. For him, it wasn’t just about the matches—it was the chance to share a dressing room with top players across formats and disciplines. The 25-year-old English batter said he was determined to pursue Test cricket seriously, but the learning environment and the standard of competition in the IPL made the decision feel impossible to pass up. “The IPL’s the marquee competition in the world. Test cricket’s the biggest thing, and I really want to give it a good crack. But the things I’ve learned here and the calibre of players that are here is something that, at that moment in time, I just couldn’t turn down… It was a dream come true, really, just to be in an IPL team,” he concluded.
Cox is set to link up with the England Lions soon for tour matches, carrying forward the experience gained from RCB’s title-winning season and the day-to-day cricket education he says he took from training with some of the sport’s best.
