Dhoni was the only one who reached out to me: Kohli recalls his lean patch

MS Dhoni was the only person who reached out to Virat Kohli when the latter was going through a lean patch last year.

“…The only person who, apart from my childhood coach and family genuinely reached out to me has been MS Dhoni,” Kohli said on the RCB podcast. Kohli shared the dressing room with Dhoni for 11 years between 2008 and 2019 and calls the charismatic cricketer from Ranchi his captain forever.

Kohli said, “He 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 does not look at the phone. So, for him to reach out to me twice it has happened now and one of the things that he had mentioned in the message while reaching out to me was that: when you are expected to be strong and looked at as a strong individual people forget to ask how are you doing?”

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“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. Sometimes, what you realise is that at any given point of time in life as a human being you need to take a couple of steps backwards, understand how you are doing, how your wellbeing is placed,” Kohli added.

When Kohli suddenly quit Test captaincy following the tour of South Africa in the January 2022, he had revealed that Dhoni was the one who had messaged him.

Kohli has overcome that phase and last month scored his third hundred in four ODIs. The Indian superstar had ended a long wait for his first hundred in close to three years with a ton in the Asia Cup T20 tournament in September. Kohli shares a strong bond with Dhoni and that reflects in the manner in which he talks about India’s World Cup-winning skipper.

(With Agency inputs)