‘I have started to listen to my body’ – Virat Kohli

Away from the India set-up that’s currently doing duty at the Nidahas Trophy in Sri Lanka, Virat Kohli is taking a break, fulfilling contractual obligations for the brands he endorses, and getting ready for next month’s Indian Premier League (IPL).

The India captain, 29, has had a busy playing schedule – in just the past two years, he has played 25 Tests, 37 one-day internationals and 19 Twenty20 Internationals to go with participation in the IPL. As a result, the break has come as a welcome chance to deal with ‘a few niggles’ and refresh the body and mind for one of the top-ranked cricketers in the world: Kohli is No.2, No.1 and No.6 in the MRF Tyres ICC Men’s Player Rankings for Tests, ODIs and T20Is respectively, and India are No.1 in both Tests and ODIs and No.3 in T20Is in the team rankings.

“Physically, I had a few niggles, I am just getting over those,” said Kohli at a promotional event on Wednesday, 14 March. “The workload has started to disagree with me a little bit. I have to be very careful about how I go forward with my body, my mind, my cricket.

“Times like these are very, very important going ahead. I am totally enjoying it; I do not even have an inch of me missing out on anything because my body really needed this. Although I am keeping a track of the games, I do not watch matches right now and feel like I want to be on the field because I have started to listen to my body.”

Apart from Kohli, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Hardik Pandya and Kuldeep Yadav were all rested for the tour of Sri Lanka, with Rohit Sharma named the stand-in captain.

Kohli has taken time off in the past, most recently during the limited-overs leg of Sri Lanka’s tour of India in late 2017 after saying during a press conference, “Definitely, I do need a rest. Why not? When I think of the time when my body needs to be rested, I'll ask for it. I am not a robot, you can slice my skin and check, I bleed.”

Kohli is expected to lead India in the one-off Test against Afghanistan in June and then in the three-format tour of England in July-September. Before all of that, there’s the IPL, of course.

“When I am done with this period, obviously in the IPL I will be coming out fresh,” he said. “I will be mentally in a better place on the field. I have been on the road for a long, long time. I have hardly missed any games. You need to pay respect to your body as well at times and this phase is very important to me.

“I can sit and not move for hours. As much energy as I show on the field, when I get time at home, I can be a total vegetable. I can be very annoying because I do not move at all.”