File photo of Virat Kohli© BCCI
Indian cricket team star batter Virat Kohli opened up about his ‘special’ relationship with childhood friend and former India teammate Ishant Sharma. Virat and Ishant played together from age group cricket and then became teammates both in domestic and international cricket. Ishant made his international debut first and one year later, Virat also followed suit. In the latest episode of the RCB podcast ‘Bold and Beyond’, Virat spoke about a variety of issues and said that when it comes to Ishant, he can share everything with him without any judgement. “Ishant is someone I naturally connected with, from Day 1, absolutely nothing has changed, regardless of whether we play together or we don’t play together – I can absolutely share everything with him, without any judgement, with complete understanding and complete empathy. So he is very special individual in my life,” Kohli said in the podcast.
Virat Kohli said that he moved away from the leadership role after more than eight years as it was getting “really tough” for him to meet the demands of it.
Kohli first led the U-19 Indian team to the U19 World Cup in 2008 and then went on to take up the leadership role for his franchise as well as India. The talismanic batter did exceptionally well in the leadership role for India but failed to lift the title for RCB.
“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 9 years. There were expectations on me from a batting perspective in every game that I played. I didn’t have this sense that the attention was off me,” Kohli said on RCB Podcast – Mindset of a Champion.
“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. 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. I need to have a space in my life where I can just come and play my cricket without being judged, without being looked at as what are you going to do this season and what’s going to happen now,” he added.
(With IANS inputs)
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