India cricket news: Ravi Shastri thinks India batsman Virat Kohli needs a break

Former India captain Ravi Shastri thinks Virat Kohli's form is going to get worse and worse unless he is given a chance to take a break from the game.

Kohli has not had the best of times over the past few months. It all began with India's poor performance in the Test series against the Proteas in South Africa.

After India lost the series 2-1, Kohli announced his decision to step down as the team's captain.

"It's been seven years of hard work, toil and relentless perseverance every day to take the team in the right direction. I've done the job with absolute honesty and left nothing out there," he said at the time.

However, the reduced responsibility - at the international level at least - has seemed to do very little to help his form with the bat.

His lean spell has continued into the India Premier League season and he has only managed to score about 40 twice in his last seven innings.

While that might not sound too bad for most, Kohli is one of the best batsmen in the world and expectations of him are a lot higher.

With all that being said, Shastri believes it might be the time that Kohli stepped away from cricket for a while to take a holiday and reset psychologically.

"I am going straight to the main guy here. Virat Kohli is overcooked. If anyone needs a break, it's him," Shastri told Star Sports.

"Whether it's two months or a month and a half, whether it's after [the] England [tour in July] or before England - he needs a break because he has got six-seven years of cricket left in him and you don't want to lose that with a fried brain."

Kohli hasn't scored a century at any level or any format of the game in his last 100 matches and has also stepped down from his captaincy roles for the India T20 team and Royal Challengers Bangalore.

"When I was [India] coach at the time when this first started, the first thing I said is, 'You have to show empathy to the guys,'" Shastri said.

"If you're going to be forceful, there is a very thin line there, from a guy losing the plot as opposed to him hanging in there and giving his best. So you have to be extremely careful."