The constant pressure of leading India and RCB for nearly a decade and the relentless scrutiny around his batting “became too much in the end” for Virat Kohli and he stepped down to be in a “happy space”.

Kohli resigned as T20 captain after the World Cup in 2021, following which he also relinquished RCB’s leadership role. A few months later, he quit Test captaincy.

“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 nine years. There were expectations on me from a batting perspective every game that I played,” Kohli said on an ‘RCB Bold Diaries’ podcast.

“I didn’t have this sense that the attention was off me. If it wasn’t captaincy, it would be batting. I was exposed to it 24x7. 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,” said Kohli.

“In the last couple of seasons, I have consciously made an effort to evolve my game,” he said. “And I’ve seen theresults of it. Again, to the point where I had to let go of people wanting to see me, this is who I am, and just go and hit the ball.

“You start from wanting to hit the ball and then you go through this whole journey of becoming someone. Expectations, this and that, to a point where you feel like this is actually pulling me back. And you have to push through and again get to the point where you say, just hit the ball.”