Indian Cricketer, Virat Kohli talked about his experience with depression during an interview. He also revealed he felt lonely and did not know how to overcome it.
The 32-year-old shared, “It’s not a great feeling when you wake up knowing that you won’t be able to score any runs, and I think all batsmen have felt that at some stage or the other, where you’re not in control of anything at all. And I just couldn’t understand at all how to get over it.”
He continued, “I think that when you look back at a very difficult phase, you realise that you had to go through that phase fully to be able to understand what’s wrong and rectify it and move forward, and just open yourself up for change, accept that there are things that are going wrong. But that was a phase where I literally couldn’t do anything to overturn what I was going through and it was tough.”
Captain of Indian cricket team added, “I felt like I was the loneliest guy in the world. And that’s what happens, you can really push yourself into a downward spiral, where you feel like you’re going further down with each day that passes. But when things turn around, you feel that maybe I was being too harsh on myself, I was putting myself down way more than what was required for me to change. So now I understand with years passing by, that there’s a line that needs to be drawn and beyond that line, if you’re going downwards, it’s absolutely not required.”
Virat also disclosed about Sachin Tendulkar’s role in his depression, he said, “I did have a chat with him about the mental side of things as well and the thing that he told me was, in cricket what he experienced was if you are going through a strong negative feeling and if that is coming into your system regularly, it is best to let it pass. If you start fighting that feeling, it grows stronger. So, that is the advice I took on board and my mindset really opened up from then on”.
Kohli also appreciated wife Anushka Sharma and called her his ‘Pillar of Strength’.
