King Kohli Heart-to-Heart: Virat Kohli revealed for the first time the secret of leaving the captaincy and his worst phase.

When Virat Kohli, the most successful Test captain in the history of Indian cricket, left the captaincy of Team India, the entire sports world was shocked. Even today, this tough question lingers in the minds of fans and veterans that why did Kohli suddenly take this decision? Now ‘King Kohli’ himself has spoken openly on all these diplomatic issues and the terrible pressure of captaincy, directly from the heart.

Speaking at the Indian Sports Summit of ‘RCB Innovation Lab’ on Tuesday, Virat Kohli revealed the bitter truth of leaving the captaincy, mental fatigue and the cult help he got during the worst phase of his career.

Captaincy and batting: When Virat was completely ‘consumed’ from within

Virat Kohli told that after giving his 100% in both captaincy and batting on the field, there came a time when he was completely empty mentally and physically.

In the words of Virat Kohli: “I had reached a point where I was the focal point of the entire Indian batting unit and also the main face of leadership (captaincy). To be honest, I had no idea how much of a burden these two tight fronts were putting on my everyday life. Since I had a cult motivation to keep Indian cricket at the top of the world, I didn’t even pay attention to this load initially. But when I gave up the captaincy, I was deeply saddened. I was completely exhausted. I felt as if I had nothing left to give to the team… That period was really terrible.”

‘Win or lose, questions never leave you’

Kohli also mentioned the intense pressure of being at the center of media and diplomatic criticism all the time as captain. He explained how difficult it was to strike a balance between individual form and team results:

Situation 1 (team wins, own flops): “If the team had won the match and I had not individually scored runs, people would have raised sharp questions on my individual performance.”

Situation 2 (Own Hit, Team Flop): “If I performed brilliantly and the team did not win the match, then questions were raised on my captaincy and the result of the match.”

Kohli said that he always oscillated between these two harsh scales and tried diplomatically to give his best for the country in every situation.

Why is Kohli indebted to Rahul Dravid and Vikram Rathore?

Virat Kohli also mentioned the darkest and most difficult patch of his career (2021-2022) when he was not scoring runs from his bat. The graph of Kohli, who ruled Test cricket from 2016 to 2019, suddenly fell down.

Virat Kohli’s comeback graph in test cricket:

Kohli said emotionally that when he was struggling with this poor form, the then head coach Rahul Dravid and batting coach Vikram Rathour expressed strong faith in him. These two giants helped Kohli a lot diplomatically and technically, due to which he managed to make a great comeback in 2023 and completely silenced the critics.