“If I call Dhoni, 99% he won’t pick up because…,” Virat Kohli on MS Dhoni’s ‘genuine’ gesture during tough phase
In a podcast, Kohli said that in that phase, apart from his wife Anushka Sharma, childhood coach, and family the person who "genuinely reached out to me has been MS Dhoni".
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Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni
It’s well-known how former India captain Virat Kohli was dealing with a rough patch for over three years. But thankfully, he rediscovered his form last year when he ended his century draught against Afghanistan in the Asia Cup 2022 and went on to slam a couple of hundreds in ODIs.
Before the Asia Cup last year, he took a one-month break to spend quality time with family and friends. After that break, he claimed that he hadn’t touched the cricket bat during that time at all. He got back to training for the continental tournament, and showed some signs of a return in the early matches, before hitting his maiden T20I ton against Afghanistan to announce his arrival in style. He recently became the fastest batsman to reach 25,000 international runs.
These were just the innings to make everyone believe that he’s still the same run machine and that it was too soon to write him off. The talismanic batsman’s 82 not-out plus the dramatic last over against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup 2022 was the moment the Indian cricket fraternity will not forget easily.
As it always happens with the cricketers, whenever a player fails to score runs on a regular basis, he is not spared at all from harsh criticism. Fans, experts, and former cricketers were ready to provide him with solutions on how he can get his lost form back. But Kohli did not buy all that stuffs; he claimed that everyone talked about his improvement on TV, but no one reached out to him genuinely.
Virat Kohli says MS Dhoni reached out to him in that tough phase
As the Indian Premier League is just a month away, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) released a podcast where the 34-year-old talked in length about that tough phase in his life. In the show, Kohli said that in that phase, apart from his wife Anushka Sharma, childhood coach, and family the person who “genuinely reached out to me has been MS Dhoni“.
“He has reached out to me and you can rarely get in touch with him. If I call him on any random day, 99 percent he will not pick up (the phone), because he just doesn’t look at the phone. So, for him to reach out to me…twice it has happened now and one of the things that he’d mentioned out to me was that: ‘when you are expected to be strong and looked at as a strong individual people forget to ask you how are you doing?'”
Kohli shared the dressing room with MS Dhoni for 11 years (from 2008 to 2019). Under him, Kohli lifted the 2011 World Cup as well as the 2013 Champions Trophy.
“So it (Dhoni’s words) hit home for me because I have always been looked at as someone who is very confident, mentally very strong, who can endure any circumstances and find a way and show us the way.” Kohli then added that he shared about this incident because Dhoni himself knows what exactly was going on as he has faced same the situation himself.
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Gouri Das
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