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Star India batter and a veteran of the game of cricket, Virat Kohli has time and again opened up on his life and an instance of the same once again came to the front when he went on to open about his experiences in RCB podcast, with Mayant Langar. In one of the instances, the 36-year-old also revealed the reason behind quitting captaincy despite being in his prime.
It is to be noted that Virat Kohli stepped down from Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) captaincy after IPL 2021 and later went on to relinquish India’s T20I captaincy. The star batter was then snubbed off ODI captaincy by the Board of Control for Cricket in India in order to focus on white-ball cricket and eventually stepped down in 2022.
I needed to be happy…: Virat KohIi breaks silence on quitting India and RCB captaincy
When inquired of being under pressure, Kohli shared candid reflections on captaining RCB in the IPL as well as captaining the Indian team. Speaking on the RCB Bold Diaries, Kohli said, "I've said this before — I had the opportunity to explore and look elsewhere, especially during the peak years of my career. From 2016 to 2019, there were constant suggestions for me to switch. At one point, it became really tough because too much was happening. I was captaining India for 7-8 years and RCB for 9 years. There were expectations from me with the bat in every game I played."
The 36-year-old also admitted that the stress began to affect his love of the game, resulting in him relinquishing the role. "I never felt like the attention was off me. I was always in a space where I didn’t know what to do. I was exposed to it 24x7, and it got really tough," Kohli further reflected. The Indian batter added, “That’s why I stepped down - I decided that if I wanted to stay in this space, I needed to be happy. I wanted to be in a place where I could just play cricket without being judged.”
The Indian veteran also revealed that he even thought of leaving the Bengaluru-based franchise, but added that he was never “tempted”. “I wouldn’t say I was tempted, but I did think about it. I asked myself, ‘What is more valuable to me?’ ‘I’ve won a lot of things for India, I’ve earned a lot of accolades. So I had to make a decision: do I want to go into a new setup and figure things out again?”
