Virat Kohli - 'When to take a break is something that I need to take a call on'

Former Indian skipper Virat Kohli is going through a turbulent phase in his game. While he has been without an international century for nearly three years now, he has failed to make an impact in the Indian Premier League (IPL) for Royals Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for the last three seasons. Even quitting the leadership duties all across has not helped him either. As a result, experts, including former Team India head coach Ravi Shastri, have called for a break for him. In the meantime, Kohli has somewhat agreed to the idea and is open to doing the same to "rejuvenate" himself mentally.

In IPL 2022, Kohli has been an average performer, scaling 236 runs in 13 innings at a meagre average of 19.67 and a strike rate of 113.46, including just a half-century, while his top score happens to be 58. His last international century came in IPL 2019, while his previous IPL ton was during the same year. His IPL 2022 average is his second-worst since IPL 2008, and he has the second-worst S/R since IPL 2012.

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In an exclusive interview with Star Sports, Kohli noted, "It's not a lot of people who mentioned it [about taking a break]. One person precisely mentioned it, which is Ravi bhai, and that's because he has seen from close quarters over the last six-seven years the reality of the situation that I have been in. The amount of cricket that I have played and the ups and downs and the toll that it takes on you to play three formats of the game plus the IPL for 10-11 years non-stop with the seven years of captaincy in between."

"It is a thing that one needs to consider because you don't want to do something that you are not a part of 100%, and I have always believed in that. So, to take a break and when to take a break is something that I need to take a call on, but it is only a healthy decision for anyone to take some time off and rejuvenate yourself mentally and physically. Not so much physically because physical fitness you keep up with through playing cricket all the time, but it is a mental kind of reset that you need, and you want to be excited about what you are doing. You don't want to feel like you have been forcing yourself into any situation," added Kohli.

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Kohli admitted that he wants to learn from this phase and reckoned, "I am not looking to put this phase behind me, to be honest. "What happened in England was a pattern, so I could work on, something that I had to overcome. There is nothing that you can point out saying there is a problem here. So, that is an easier thing to process because I know that I'm batting well, and when I start feeling that rhythm back then, I know I am batting well, which wasn't the case in England. I didn't feel like I was batting well at all. So, I had to work hard on one thing that I could be exposed to repeatedly, which I overcame. Right now, that's not the case. I know where my game stands, and you cannot come this far in your international career without having the ability to counter the situations and conditions and counter different kinds of bowling."

"My experiences are sacred to me. Whatever I have experienced in this phase or the past as well. One thing that I can vouch for is that I have never valued myself more as a person. Because I'm experiencing now that there is a great sense of identity created by the world for you, which is far more different, so far away from the reality of you as a human being. So, I am now experiencing that I value myself and care for my well-being way more than I would have in the past. And, contrary to a lot of belief or a lot of perceptions, as I mentioned on the outside, I'm actually in the happiest phase of my life," concluded Kohli.