Virat Kohli has admitted being affected by the burden of expectations and workload.
The former India captain said he had been “trying to fake intensity a bit” in his bid to strive for excellence before taking a break.
“This is the first time in ten years that I have not touched the bat in a whole month,” Kohli said on Star Sports show Virat: Heart To Heart, ahead of his 100th T20I on Sunday.
“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... Thinking ‘no, I can do it’… But the 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... 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.
Sunday’s Asia Cup match against Pakistan will mark Kohli’s return to international cricket after a 42-day break.
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 (trying to do).
“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.”
Kohli said taking this break helped him rediscover his excitement for training and cricket once again. “When you are involved in such an environment, you are unable to see anything. When you remove yourself from there, then you realise what was happening...
“This has been an amazing break. I have never had this long a break, and the first thing I realised was that I was getting up in the morning excited to go to the gym. “You can tend to get carried away with so many demands nowadays… You have seen the results of what happened to Ben Stokes and Trent Boult… Moeen (Ali) retiring from Test cricket. These aren’t abnormalities...” It remains to be seen how Kohli fares after admitting to “feeling light”.
“I’m feeling light now for sure, and it wasn’t just about the workload of cricket,” Kohli said. “And intensity... I didn’t even realise I was faking it. I was trying to push myself into a zone of competitiveness. But it wasn’t coming naturally to me...
“People ask me a lot about how do I do this on the field,and how do I carry on with so much intensity.
“I just tell them I love playing the game, and I love the fact that I have so much to contribute every ball and I would give every inch of my energy on the field and for me it never felt abnormal... I want to make my team win at any cost...
“That was not happening naturally. I was having to push myself but I didn’t know it because I had become this ideal kind of a sportsperson to look up to.
“I am very grateful for the fact that so many people get inspired because of me, but you can’t stop being a human being because of that.”
