“I didn’t touch my bat for a month for the first time in 10 years.” Virat Kohli says he was “mentally down” before the break.
“I didn’t touch my bat for a month for the first time in 10 years.” Virat Kohli says he was “mentally down” before the break. A few days after England’s captain Ben Stokes talked about his mental health problems, India’s former captain Virat Kohli spoke about how the long dry spell of runs had hurt his “mental health” and how it “bothered” him that he “wasn’t excited to play … practice”.
“I am not shy to admit that I was feeling mentally down,” Kohli told Star Sports. “We don’t want to be looked at as mentally weak. Trust me, faking to be strong is far worse than admitting to be weak … I’m 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,” he said.
Ravi Shastri’s Suggestion and Kohli’s State
Kohli hasn’t scored a hundred in an international game in almost three years. Even though people like former India coach Ravi Shastri have said he needs a break and should quit the IPL, Kohli has kept playing. He seems to think it was a mistake now.
“I came to realisation that I was trying to fake my intensity a bit recently,” Kohli said. “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 … We don’t want to be looked at as mentally weak.”
After the tour of England, Kohli finally took a break. He skipped the two limited-over series in the West Indies and Zimbabwe.
“For the first time in 10 years, I didn’t touch my bat for a month. I haven’t done that ever in my life. I came to the realisation that I was trying to kind of fake my intensity a bit recently. ‘I can do it, you’re competitive’, you’re convincing yourself you have the intensity but your body is telling you to stop, your mind is telling you to just take a break and step back. And it’s packed, I understand what Ravi bhai [Ravi Shastri] has mentioned, he’s mentioned about the volume of cricket and of how I’ve played 40 or 50% more than anyone in the last ten years. So it’s very easy to ignore these things (because) you’re fit, you’re working hard on yourself,” Kohli said.
His highest score in the last five games, which include a Test, two T20Is, and one-day internationals, was 20. His previous hundred for his country was in 2019 against Bangladesh. Kohli talked about what he had learned during the break. “This period taught me a lot of things that I wasn’t allowing to come to surface. When they eventually came up, I embraced it.”
Looking up to the future
Kohli said it hit him hard when he found that he wasn’t getting excited to play and train. “I was experiencing that I was not excited to play, I was not excited to practice and that really disturbed me. I thought this is not who I am. I felt I just had to step out from that environment. And if you get some distance, you can see … This has been an amazing break, I’ve never had a break this long. And the first thing I realized was I got up and I was excited to go to the gym, that was the first mark. This is a normal practice and everyone should realize it and give themselves the space to come to the conclusion.”
Kohli also told the other players to think about themselves, give themselves space, and put mental health first.
“And not keep running like headless chickens all over the place. Because you can get carried away with so many demands, such schedules being piled up. You’ve seen the result of what happened with Ben Stokes, Trent Boult and Moeen Ali. These are not abnormalities, it’s a very normal practice for people who are in touch with themselves and know what they want.”
Another essential learning, Kohli said, was that “there is much more to life than just your profession.”
“If you’re engulfed in an atmosphere where people are judging you only by your professional identity, somewhere you lose perspective as to who you are as a human being. I can’t be just this person, yes people love me and get inspired by me but who am I at the core of my being? So these things I understood strongly.”
“The mind feeds on negativity. And I’ve always been a guy who has followed my heart. I was looked at a guy who was a brat, and I was. I was not mature enough but I was true to myself. I never wanted to be or tried to be someone else, which in this recent phase I have.”
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