For The First Time in 10 Years, I Didn't Hold My Bat For a Month - Virat Kohli

Virat KOhli
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August
27
/ 2022

Former India captain Virat Kohli has admitted that there were times he was feeling “mentally down” and even tried to fake intensity during matches which led to him taking a break from cricket following the 2022 England tour.

He took a break from cricket. For this reason, Kohli did not accompany Team India on the tour of West Indies and Zimbabwe.

He will now make a comeback to the Indian team from the crucial Asia Cup match against Pakistan on Sunday. Not only Kohli but every Indian cricket fan is hoping that his bad phase will end soon and where will be a better chance of finishing it than a high voltage match against Pakistan. However, ahead of this match, Kohli has revealed a big deal related to himself. He said that he felt mentally disturbed before taking a break from cricket.

However Virat Kohli's last century in international cricket came in November 2019. Since then, he has not been able to score a century in any format.

Kohli, in an interview with Star Sports, also revealed that during the break, he did not touch his cricket bat for a month — an instance which occurred for the first time in a decade.

"This is the first time in ten years that I have not touched the bat in a whole month, When I sat down and thought about it, I was like I haven't actually touched a bat for 30 days, which I haven't done ever in my life. That's when I came to the realisation that I was kind of trying to fake my intensity a bit recently. 'No, I can do it'… being competitive and convincing yourself that you have intensity but your body is telling you to stop. Mind is telling you to just take a break and step back... You can neglect it by saying you are fit, you are working hard on yourself, and you will be fine because you are fit mentally."

"I have been looked at as a guy who is mentally very strong, and I am, but everyone has a limit, and you need to recognise that limit, otherwise things can get unhealthy for you. So this period actually taught me a lot of things that I was not allowing to come to the surface. When they did, I embraced it. Yaar, there is much more to life than just your profession. And when the environment around you is such that everyone looks at you through your professional identity, somewhere you start losing perspective as a human being."

 

Kohli said that the demands of his schedule had affected his love for training, something that "disturbed" him and made him realise he needed "to step away" for some time. "I have always been a guy who followed his heart from day one… I never wanted to be or tried to be someone else, which in this recent phase I have been. I have tried to keep up to the demands and the expectations, not really felt my inner being completely, which this phase [away from the game] allowed me to do. I was experiencing that I was not excited to train, I was not excited to practice, and that really disturbed me because this is not who I am, and I literally needed to step away from that environment."

“I want to make my team win at any cost and if that means that I am gasping for breath and I walk off the field, so be it. I mean that’s the kind of preparation I go through to be able to play like that. Wo naturally nahi ho raha tha aur mujhe push karna pad raha tha (I was not able to get that high intensity naturally, I was pushing myself to do it). But I just didn’t know it,” said Kohli.

Kohli didn’t dodge the fact that people from outside and even his teammates had questioned his high-intensity approach on the field and why it never felts abnormal to him.

 

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