2021 was harsh on Virat Kohli. It was the year King Kohli was dethroned, felt many of the Indian cricket fans who saw him getting stripped off his ODI captaincy after he stepped down from the position of T20I captaincy following India’s early departure from T20 World Cup 2021.
By the end of January 2022, he had stepped down from the position of Test captaincy as well. Nevertheless, 2022 would turn out to be another bad year—at least for the first eight months, where he accounted for 439 runs in 16 games in 2022 IPL season which was followed by a poor outing in England.
All in all, in last 100 days, he has taken two breaks from cricket—his first love.
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Therefore, something wasn’t right and Kohli did acknowledge it that his mental health was deteriorating.
“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 in a video posted by Star Sports.
“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 allowed to come to the surface. When they eventually came up, I embraced it."
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He then went onto cite the ‘taboo’ that was associated with mental health issues, saying people don’t usually talk about it.
“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 be weak," he said.
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