‘Asked him for a few minutes, but we talked for hours’: Team India batter recalls meeting Virat Kohli

Former Team India skipper Virat Kohli is renowned for having groomed plenty of Indian youngsters. The likes of KL Rahul, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Mohammed Siraj are few of the young players who have credited Kohli for helping them in their early days. 

Being one of the most senior players in the team, Kohli has often been spotted chatting with young players and giving them advice. 

Recently, one of India’s young prospects recalled how she asked Virat for a couple of minutes, but instead, they ended up chatting about cricket for hours. Indian Women’s team batter Jemimah Rodrigues recalled how she and Smriti Mandhana, another Indian Women’s team player caught up with Kohli at a cafe in New Zealand. 

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Speaking on the Ranveer Show, Rodrigues revealed, “Smriti and I had the opportunity to talk to him. We had asked him ‘we want to speak to you Virat bhaiya about batting. Can we meet?’. We were in the same hotel in New Zealand. He was like ‘yeah sure, come’. So he called us at the cafe and Anushka Sharma was also there. We had asked him for just a few minutes but we ended up speaking for four hours. We spoke half an hour about batting but after that it was just normal things.”

The 21-year-old Rodrigues, who hails from Mumbai further revealed how she asked Kohli about handling the pressure, and he advised them to not think about ‘expectations’ and just focus on doing their job well. 

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“I asked him about how to handle expectations. I told him ‘You are Virat Kohli. If you’ve scored a fifty, it’s like you have underperformed for people. So how do you handle that expectation?’ He said ‘for me everytime I am out there on the field, I just look at the scoreboard and just focus on it. Do that and don’t focus on crowd and what I can do to help India win. If I stop giving these expectations importance, and just look at the process, the results will automatically follow’,” the youngster added. 

For the unversed, Jemimah was left out of India’s squad for the upcoming ICC Women’s World Cup. She will be hoping to make her comeback and force her way into the playing XI soon.