Virat Kohli’s tenure as captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore may have ended without an IPL title but the franchise will still “celebrate” his contributions over the years, said the team’s pacer Harshal Patel.

He stressed that Kohli, who has decided to step down as India T20 captain after the upcoming World Cup and RCB skipper post the ongoing IPL, remains a “leader”.

“In terms of his captaincy, there are captains and there are leaders, he is definitely a leader. Just because he won’t have the captaincy tag, it doesn’t make him any less of a leader,” Harshal said after RCB’s loss to Kolkata Knight Riders on Monday.

“So, I just want to thank him for whatever he has contributed for this team and to my growth,” he said.

He also said that the team would “celebrate” the contributions of Kohli as a skipper.

“Yeah, I think, absolutely we are going to celebrate his contributions and it would have been nicer to celebrate that with the trophy in our hand, but it was not meant to be. But his contributions, like I said, have been immense and we are definitely going to celebrate that.”

Harshal conceded that the entire outfit was disappointed on how it finished the season. “Obviously, we are all disappointed in the way we finished the tournament. The way we were playing, I think we should have been in (the) top two. But as we all know, it is a game of small margins,” Harshal, the leading wicket-taker in this edition with 32 wickets from 15 games, said.

Sunil Narine gave glimpses of his ‘old mystery’ with the ball and then topped it up with three sixes as Kolkata Knight Riders’ four-wicket victory in an exciting Eliminator dashed Kohli’s dream of winning an IPL trophy while leading RCB.

“In hindsight you could have done a lot of things differently, but at the end of the day, we all know that once (the) top four teams are qualified, they are all on the same line.

“So, at the end of the day, who plays better on that particular day matters, but obviously we all are very disappointed in the way we finished but we are also proud of the way we played cricket in the league stage,” the Haryana pacer added.

“I am very happy with what I have been able to achieve and very happy with how I contributed to the (team’s) wins. Records are something that I don’t really look at, but in the context of the game, it would have been nice if he (Devdutt Padikkal) had taken the catch, we could have gone a little closer.”