“I stopped the car, and I couldn’t believe it” - When Virat Kohli opened up on being dropped from the Indian team in 2009

Ace Team India batter Virat Kohli is going through a tough phase in his career. He had a horrific Border-Gavaskar Trophy campaign, where India suffered a 1-3 defeat against Australia in the five-match series. As a result, they have also squandered the opportunity to make it to the ICC World Test Championship final for the third time in a row.

Kohli aggregated only 190 runs in five matches at an average of 23.75. Barring a hundred in the second innings of the Perth Test, he has struggled to get going, getting out to the outside-the-off-stump line eight times.

Fans and experts have questioned Kohli's place in the Test playing XI amid his dismal batting form. While Team India skipper Rohit Sharma 'stood down' from the playing XI for the final Test against Australia in Sydney, Kohli's place is hanging by the thread.

Back in 2009, Virat Kohli opened up about being left out of the Indian team shockingly. The Delhi-born cricketer was picked to play for the Men in Blue only six months after guiding the U19 team to the World Cup title in Malaysia. He couldn't make the most of the opportunity, scoring only one half-century in five ODIs against Sri Lanka.

However, he was dropped from the five-match ODI series against New Zealand away from home early in 2009. The sudden snub left a lasting impact on the young cricketer, which forced him to change how he conducted himself on and off the field.

Speaking to ESPNCricinfo in 2009, Kohli said:

"I was part of the one-day series against England in late 2008. After that, I was left out of the team, and I really didn't understand why. Probably because of my conduct off the field. Then I realized how big an impact it had on the way people saw me. "He's arrogant, a brash kid, and just says anything that comes to his mind.""

"There were selections for the New Zealand tour for one-dayers and I had done well in the first series I played. I was driving home and a reporter told me I was not in the squad. I was in total shock. I stopped the car, and I couldn't believe it. That was when I started thinking, "This is a major issue and I need to look into it," he added.

Kohli was also left out of the 2009 series against the West Indies despite scoring runs in domestic cricket, which he felt helped him grow as a cricketer.

"And I was again not selected for West Indies [2009 ODIs]," Kohli continued. "I had scored about five hundreds in seven games in domestic cricket in one-dayers. At the time I was disappointed, but now I'm really glad that these things happened to me. They never let me relax, never let me lose my focus. If I had been selected on those tours, and not played, I would have been in a different kind of mindset. Not being selected, doing well in domestic cricket - that made me do even better in domestic cricket and India A matches, and that helped me grow as a player, and unknowingly my mindset just changed as a batsman."

"I wasn't getting selected but I was improving on the sidelines. I didn't realise it at all, because my only aim was to score runs, and I kept improving as I scored. It was a good knock on the head for me, and helped me sort things out at that time," he continued.

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"It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have" - Virat Kohli

Despite being immensely talented, Kohli had to struggle a lot to make it big in international cricket. Despite making his international debut in 2008, it was in 2010-11 when he finally found a footing at the highest level.

The right-handed batter revealed in the aforementioned interview that his family and coach helped him stay motivated during the rough patch.

"My brother, my family, my coach - all these people helped me a lot. Whatever I was doing, they motivated me," Kohli said when asked who helped him during that phase.

"It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there's nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste. I didn't want people to say that who he was one of those players who had talent and could have played for India," he concluded.

Virat Kohli has gone on to become one of the best batters in the history of cricket. He has scored over 27000 international runs and has 81 hundreds across formats.