- Tuesday, March 11, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
It’s been more than 1,000 days that he has not hit an international hundred, something he used to do in style till 2019. Fans and media are turning increasingly impatient and although he has been picked for the upcoming Asia Cup where India will take on arch-rivals Pakistan in their first game, another failure could add more fuel to the fire.
In this background, ace India batter Virat Kohli broke his silence on things during a talk with Star Sports. The 33-year-old recalled a similar slump in form that he went through during the tour of England in 2014. He recovered from that to become a better batter. But according to Kohli, he was making mistakes during that time and there was a pattern to it and he worked on that to overcome the bad patch. This time, he is not making any mistakes, he said.
“What happened in England was a pattern, so something that I could work on and something that I had to kind of overcome. Right now, as you rightly mentioned, there is nothing that you can point out saying that the problem is happening here.
“So, that for me, is actually an easier thing to process because I know that I’m batting well and at times, when I start feeling that rhythm back, then I know that I’m batting well. So, that for me is not an issue, which wasn’t the case in England; I didn’t feel like I was batting well at all. So, I had to work hard on one thing that could be exposed again and again which I overcame; right now this is not the case,” he said.
Kohli, who has missed a couple of white-ball series after a disastrous tour of England last month, said he understands his game at the moment and is not afraid of the bad phase. He said he wants to learn from these mistakes and about the core values he has as a sportsperson and athlete.
“..As long as I’m ticking those boxes, I know there are ups and downs, and when I come out of this phase, I know how consistent I can be. My experiences are sacred to me. Whatever I have experienced in this phase or in the past, as well one thing that I can vouch for, is that I have never valued myself more as a person,” he said.
India will play Pakistan in a high-voltage clash at Dubai International Stadium on Sunday (28).
