The incident that transformed Virat Kohli overnight as an individual

Indian all-format captain Virat Kohli has had a stupendous career and his numbers are turning colossal by the day. He recently became the fastest batsman to score 10,000 ODI runs and he is speculated to rack up more records. The 30-year-old is now set to play the four-match Test series against hosts Australia, which is set to get underway tomorrow at the renowned Adelaide Oval.

However, the start of the glorious cricketing journey wasn’t like a fairytale for him by any stretch of the imagination. Back on December 19, 2006, his father Prem Kohli passed away. His mother Saroj Kohli went down the memory lane and narrated the incident. A few weeks following Virat’s 18th birthday, the cricketer watched his father bedridden for a month after a stroke.

His father passed away at 3’o’clock in the morning and Virat could do nothing but see the unfortunate incident pan out. The family couldn’t consult a doctor as it was in the middle of the night. It was the same day when he started his knock of 90 before being wrongly given out. After his dad’s demise, Virat called his mentor in tears and expressed his desire to play the next day.

He resumed at a score of 40 and added 50 more runs to lead Delhi to a stupendous victory. Thereafter, the heartbroken Virat headed straight to his father’s funeral. However, the occurring transformed Kohli into a more sensible person, instead of bogging him down.

“Virat changed a bit after that day. Overnight he became a much more matured person. He took every match seriously. He hated being on the bench. It’s as if his life hinged totally on cricket after that day. Now, he looked like he was chasing his father’s dream which was his own too,” Virat’s mother was quoted as saying to The Cricket Monthly.

It made me the person I am today

Reminiscing the sad times, Kohli didn’t mince any words in saying that it contributed a lot to his growth as an individual. Currently, Virat is one of the most disciplined cricketers in the Indian team. He takes care of his looks, has a balanced diet, which helps him maintain an incredible level of fitness. Moreover, he also put forth how he changed himself from a chubby-faced boy to a bearded beast.

“It made me the person I am today. The [physical] training part, the eating part, the self-discipline part, all that was not included. All these things are part of work ethics for me. I am a freak for keeping things clean. Keeping my room stacked up nicely and stuff like that is part of my daily routine now.

So I had to figure out what can take me to that next level. What can give me more stability in my mind so that I do not focus on stuff like opinions, advice, suggestions. My eating habits, my training habits, they became very bad. I told myself: ‘You cannot look like that if you are an international cricketer. You need to do something’,” Kohli mentioned.

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