New Delhi: M S Dhoni was the only person who reached out to Virat Kohli when the latter was going through a lean patch last year.
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.
“What is interesting is that throughout this phase apart from Anushka, who has been the biggest source of strength for me because she has been with me throughout this whole time and she has seen me very closely as how have I felt, things that I have gone through, the kind of things that have happened…
“…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’.
“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’d 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?’
“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 January 2022, he had revealed that Dhoni was the only one who had messaged him.