India batter Virat Kohli is set to make a comeback to international cricket after a while and his million fans will be praying that the ace scorer hits the purple patch again. The 33-year-old, who missed the twin tours of the West Indies and Zimbabwe before Asia Cup which is kicking off in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday (27), has scored only one fifty in his last 22 innings (Indian Premier League and international games included) and will be aiming to make his bat talk in the match against Pakistan in Dubai on Sunday (28).
Kohli has been under the scanner over his prolonged lull and time and again, it became evident that the man is under tremendous mental pressure. He has also made chilling revelations about his mental health recently and now, he has revealed that he didn't even touch his bat during his latest break, something he has not done in the last 10 years.
“For the first time in 10 years, I didn't touch my bat for a month. I came to realisation that I was trying to fake my intensity a bit recently. I was convincing myself that no, you had the intensity. But your body was telling you to stop. The mind was telling me to take a break and step back,” Kohli said in a video posted by Star Sports which will broadcast the Asia Cup matches.
"I'm looked at as a guy who is mentally very strong and I am. But everyone has a limit and you need to recognize that limit, otherwise things can get unhealthy for you.
“This period taught me a lot of things that I wasn't allowing to come to surface. When they eventually came up, I embraced it.”
Kohli also revealed that he felt “mentally down".
“I'm not shy to admit that I was feeling mentally down. This is a very normal thing to feel, but we don't speak because we are hesitant. We don't want to be looked at as mentally weak. Trust me, faking to be strong is far worse than admitting to be weak,” he said.
A youth carries an elderly man as they wade through a flooded street after heavy rainfall in Wellampitiya on the outskirts of Colombo on November 30, 2025. The death toll from floods and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah has risen to at least 334 people across Sri Lanka, with nearly 400 still missing, the Disaster Management Centre said on November 30. Getty Images
A man carries his cat across a flooded road in Wellampitiya on the outskirts of Colombo on November 29, 2025. Sri Lanka made an appeal for international assistance on November 29 as the death toll from heavy rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah rose to 123, with another 130 reported missing. Getty Images
