IPL 2020 | Kohli's life motto is ‘Bear the cross and wear the crown’, reveals Shanker Basu

Generally, champions are crowned in front of everyone but made when no one is watching them. You have to keep putting in hours and hours of hard to attain success and who knows it better than Indian skipper and arguably the best all-format batsman of the generation Virat Kohli. The Delhi boy completely turned around his food habits and lifestyle to evolve as a leaner, fitter and faster athlete and now his legacy is rubbing on the other Indian players as well, who now are counted among the fittest in the world.

The man behind the development of Virat Kohli the athlete, RCB's Fitness Coach Shanker Basu, has stated that Kohli became 'fitter' and is now in much better shape given his 'weight' and 'movements' are matching his past best.

"Virat Kohli has come back in much better shape. He is at his best weight at the moment and his movement patterns are pretty much in sync with his best self in the past. He has taken this break as an opportunity to work on all the pointers which needed attention from a physical point. I guess his motto to life is 'Bear the cross and wear the crown'," Basu told PTI from Dubai.

Shankar, who was India's strength and conditioning trainer from 2015 to 2019, asserted that Kohli was able to cover those areas of fitness, which he otherwise won't get time to and how his 'attitude' towards fitness stood out during the lockdown phase. 

"Virat had the time to be very specific with his meal plans and running intervals at home. He did not have much of a choice during the lockdown and he invested on a treadmill and worked on his endurance which is otherwise not possible during a packed calendar.

"For ground reaction forces every now and then, he did shuttle running in his apartment which had a little space. With all these constraints the attitude stood out more than the workout.

"Apart from that, his customised strength work to compliment that was his mantra during the lockout. So a combination of running and strength work and he kept it simple by just following this to the T," said the 52-year-old.