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.
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.
“For the first time in 10 years, I didn’t touch my bat for a month. I came to realisation that I was trying to fake my intensity a bit recently. I was convincing myself that no, you had the intensity. But your body was telling you to stop. The mind was telling me to take a break and step back,” Kohli said.
“I’m looked at as a guy who is mentally very strong and I am. But everyone has a limit and you need to recognize that limit, otherwise, things can get unhealthy for you. This period taught me a lot of things that I wasn’t allowing to come to the surface. When they eventually came up, I embraced them.
“I’m not shy to admit that I was feeling mentally down. This is a very normal thing to feel, but we don’t speak because we are hesitant. We don’t want to be looked at as mentally weak. Trust me, faking to be strong is far worse than admitting to being weak,” he said.
In another interview with BCCI.TV, he accepted the fact that the high intensity he brings to the ground was not coming out naturally.
“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.
