Virat Kohli is not mulling retirement as he has been enjoying the game and the “competitive streak” inside him is very much intact.
Kohli displayed the old spark during India’s recent Champions Trophy victory in Dubai.
“Don’t get nervous. I’m not making any announcements. As of now everything is fine. I still love playing the game,” Kohli said at an event moderated by Isa Guha at the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit in Bengaluru on Saturday.
Kohli said he no longer aspires to achieve milestones, but is playing cricket for the “pure joy” of it.
“It’s pretty much come down to just the pure joy, enjoyment, competitive streak and love for the game. And as long as that is there I will continue to play. As I said today I am not playing for any achievement,” he said.
“You know the competitive streak doesn’t allow you to find the answer (for the retirement question). I had a very interesting conversation about this with Rahul Dravid. He said you always have to stay in touch with yourself.
“Figure out where you are placed in your life and the answer is not that easy. You might be going through a lean phase and you feel like this is it. But it might not be.
“But then when it is time, my competitive streak would not allow me to accept it. Maybe one more month. Maybe six more months. So I think it’s a fine balance. At this point of time in my life I feel pretty happy,” he said.
Kohli admitted once again that advancing age has made the whole process of staying at the top of his game a bit more tough.
“I want to be able to have all my energy in place. Now it takes much more effort as people who have played the game for a long period of time understand...
“I think for me it’s a natural progression. I’m sure all these young guys will hopefully get to that place. But now, the energy that’s coming out of me feels very peaceful and calm,” he said.
The recent Australia tour left Kohli experiencing “the most intense kind of disappointment” he had previously only felt in England in 2014 when he went without a single half-century in 10 innings.
Kohli finished with 190 runs in nine innings at an average of 23.75, including an unbeaten 100 in Perth, in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
“If you ask me the intensity of how disappointed I’ve been, the most recent Australia tour would be the one that’s most fresh. So it might feel the most intense to me,” Kohli said.
“For a long time, the tour of England in 2014 bothered me the most. But I can’t look at it that way. I might not have an Australia tour again in four years. I don’t know. You have to make peace with whatever’s happened in your life. In 2014, I still had the chance to go in 2018 and do what I did. It might not have been the case. It might have been another blunder. But it didn’t turn out that way.
“So, there’s no such guarantees in life. I think when you are at a stage for a long period of time, when you perform, people get used to your performances. They start feeling for you more than you feel sometimes. This has to be corrected.”
Kohli revealed he had moments in Australia where the lack of scores made him over-eager to correct things.
“Once you start taking on the energy and the disappointment from the outside, then you start burdening yourself way more,” Kohli said. “And then you start thinking about things, like ‘I’ve got two or three days left on this tour, I need to make an impact now.’ And you start getting more desperate.”
Written with PTI inputs
