India cricket star Virat Kohli missed the recent series with England in order to spend time with his family after the birth of his son, he has confirmed.
Kohli and wife Anushka Sharma celebrated the birth of son Akaay, their second child, in February. The 35-year-old and his actress wife had welcomed their daughter Vamika in 2021.
Back in January, India confirmed Kohli would miss the first two tests against England for unspecified personal reasons. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) later confirmed those same reasons would keep him out of the remainder of the series.India managed to secure a 4-1 test series triumph without the superstar. And now, weeks after the final test in Dharamsala, he has opened up on the reasons for his absence.
“We were not in the country,” Kohli confirmed, per NDTV. “We were in a place where people were not recognising us. Just time together as a family, just to feel normal for two months – for me, my family – it was a surreal experience.
“Of course having two kids, things become totally different from a family perspective. Just the ability to be together, the connections you make with your older child.
“Couldn’t have been more grateful to God for the opportunity to spend time with the family. It’s an amazing experience to just be another person on the road and not be recognised. That’s the promise I can give here – I’ll keep turning up and keep trying my best”
“When you’re exposed the way we have been, in the back end of this series in particular, it does require some pretty deep thinking and some adjustment to make sure we’re staying true to what we believe in,” England test coach Brendon McCullum said after the test series defeat. “India probably outplayed us at the style of cricket we want to play and made us start to retreat a little bit. That’s something that we will have to change. If anything, we got more timid as the series went on.
“It is something we need to address because other teams will put us under pressure as well and we can’t really allow that doubt to creep into our game. We need to have total conviction in what we are doing in those pressure situations.