Father-again Virat Kohli likely to return to action in IPL 2024

There was a sense of relief among the legion of Virat Kohli fans when the former India captain dropped an Instagram post late on Tuesday evening that he and Anushka Sharma had been blessed with baby boy Akaay. No surprises really that by Wednesday morning, the post had garnered 8.2 million likes.

Kohli, who became a father for the second time on 15 February, had already made himself unavailable for the final three Tests against England at home. Last seen in two of the T20 Internationals against Afghanistan, the master batter is now expected to be back in action for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, tentatively scheduled to start in India on 22 March.

‘’With abundant happiness and our hearts full of love, we are pleased to inform everyone that on 15th February, we welcomed our baby boy Akaay and Vamika’s little brother into this world,’’ Kohli said on Instagram, where he is 12th among celebrities in terms of followers. ‘’We seek your blessings and good wishes in this beautiful time in our lives. We request you to kindly respect our privacy at this time,’’ he added.

No sooner had Kohli announced the news than his close friend and former South Africa captain A.B. de Villiers began trending on X. After all, De Villiers was the first to officially reveal the reason behind Kohli’s absence from the India vs England Test series before he retracted the statement on his YouTube channel a few days later.

‘’My friend Virat Kohli is still not available. I cry out to everybody to give him the privacy that he deserves. Family comes first. No one knows what exactly is going on. I am asking all of us to respect that. I made a bit of a blunder in my previous show and I apologise to the Kohli family for that,’’ he said.

‘’Just not nice. I shared information that was not confirmed at all so, I am begging everyone out there to respect him and his family and his private time. Hopefully, we will see Virat back, happy and scoring runs. Like he always does.’’