Our Bureau
New Delhi
Cricket maestro Virat Kohli has opened up his struggles to be under scrutiny for delivering his best as the captain of the Indian Cricket team while also leading Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the Indian Premier League. The relentless pressures arising from the dual fronts led Kohli to step down as the captain for both the teams, taking the player into his “happy space”.
Kohli resigned as T20 captain after the World Cup in 2021, followed by giving up leadership at the RCB. Not much later, he stopped leading the Test matches after the defeat of the Indian team to South Africa.
According to Kohli, it was difficult to handle the constant attention he was receiving, which had ultimately turned “unbearable”. “At one point, it did become tough for me because there was just too much happening in my career. I was captaining India for a period of 7-8 years. I captained RCB for nine years. There were expectations on me from a batting perspective every game that I played,” said Kohli in an ‘RCB Bold Diaries’ podcast with Mayanti Langer.
“I didn’t have this sense that the attention was off me. If it wasn’t captaincy, it would be batting. I was exposed to it 24×7. It did get very tough on me, and it did get too much in the end.” Kohli, who also took a month-long break from cricket in 2022 and did not touch a bat during that phase, added that a time had come in his life when he was struggling to be happy in the spotlight.
Kohli also opened up about the opportunities he kept receiving during the boom of his career. “I’ve told this before. I’ve had this opportunity to explore, to look elsewhere, especially in the peak years of my career. From 2016-19, I had these constant suggestions to switch..,” he further explained.
Kohli emphasized a strong need to not be judged while playing as the factor that drove him to relinquish his captaincy so that he could just focus on batting. “”That’s why I stepped down because I felt like if I’ve decided I want to be in this place, I need to be happy,” Kohli concluded.
