'He helped me at that phase' - Jemimah Rodrigues recalls inspring conversation with Virat Kohli

Indian women’s cricketer Jemimah Rodrigues recently opened up on her meeting up with one of the best batters of the decade, Virat Kohli. The 33-year-old has been an inspiration to many of the young and upcoming cricketers for the way he has handled the ups and downs in his phenomenal international career and there are very few cricketers who have shown love and passion for the game like him.

Rodrigues, meanwhile, hasn’t been part of the Indian limited-overs squad for a while now and couldn’t either find a place in the squad for the upcoming Women’s World Cup 2022. The 20-year-old still has a lot of potentials and she had some good numbers in the T20I format for India.

We ended up speaking for four hours: Jemimah Rodrigues

Rodrigues mentioned that she along with Smriti Mandhana had the chance to catch up with Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma in a cafe and recalled the chat with the star batter. She recalled asking for a brief chat but the conversation went on for four hours and was delighted to have met the former Indian captain. She added that Kohli proved to be an inspiration for her in the tough phase she had been going through.

“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,” Rodrigues said on ‘The Ranveer Show’.

“A lot of things were spoken. We spoke a lot about batting so I think I am privileged like that. I get to meet such people. At the right time, we met them and they’ve actually inspired me and helped me at that phase I was in,” she added.

Meanwhile, Kohli hasn’t hit an international century for the last three years and is nearing his 100th Test which would be a historic feat for any cricketer. He has been named in the upcoming Test series against Sri Lanka and will have the chance to end his century drought.