'Proud of your success and decision to share such personal experiences' - Sachin Tendulkar lauds Virat Kohli for opening up on his depression

Indian skipper Virat Kohli made a bold decision as he decided to openly reveal his depressed mental state after a disastrous outing in the India tour of England in 2014. Kohli was put under major scrutiny in 2014 after he failed to live up to his reputation against England and ended up scoring just 134 in 10 innings, at a paltry average of 13.4.

Speaking about the bad phase of his life and cricket career, Virat revealed his story of battling depression during the England tour in 2014 as he woke up with the feeling that he won’t be able to score runs. The Indian skipper narrated that it wasn’t a good feeling for him as he didn’t know how to get over with that phase.

“I did (feel depressed). It’s not a great feeling when you wake up knowing that you won’t be able to score any runs and I think all batsmen have felt that at some stage or the other that you are not in control of anything at all. And you just don’t understand how to get over it,” the 32-year-old had said while speaking on Mark Nicholas’ ‘Not Just Cricket’ podcast.

With his confession of fighting depression, Virat managed to impress the batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar as the latter took to his official Twitter handle to laud the Indian captain for showcasing his brave side and coming out in open regarding his mental state.

“@imVkohli, proud of your success & decision to share such personal experiences. These days youngsters are constantly judged on social media. Thousands speak about them but not to them. We need to be able to listen to them and help them flourish,” Tendulkar tweeted.

.@imVkohli, proud of your success & decision to share such personal experiences.

These days youngsters are constantly judged on social media. Thousands speak about them but not to them.

We need to be able to listen to them and help them flourish. https://t.co/xsBThtzOTx

— Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) February 20, 2021

Virat Kohli reveals the advice he had received from Sachin Tendulkar

Virat has travelled way ahead of the 2014 tour as he is arguably the best batsmen of the modern era across all three formats in the international circuit. The batsman had stamped his authority on England pitches during the 2018 India tour of England by amassing a whopping 593 runs at an average of 59.3, including two centuries.

Further in the interaction, Virat had shed light on how a piece of advice by Sachin had changed his outlook towards the game and helped him tackle depression and come out of that phase.

“The thing that he (Sachin Tendulkar) told me was, in cricket, what he experienced was if you are going through a strong negative feeling and if that is coming into your system regularly, it is best to let it pass. If you start fighting that feeling, it grows stronger. So, that is the advice I took on board, and my mindset really opened up from then on.” Kohli had said.