India’s fitness revolution started with Virat Kohli, states Ravi Shastri
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India’s coach Ravi Shastri believes that Virat Kohli is solely responsible for bringing about the fitness revolution that the Indian side has witnessed in the last five years. Kohli is widely renowned as one of the fittest athletes in the world and made sacrifices aplenty to fine-tune his body.
Up until the turn of the last decade, the Indian team were considered as one of the most indolent sides on the field, partially due to the old, senior players in the side - who were not the most flexible cricketers - and partially due to the lack of hunger to strive to be the best. But ever since Virat Kohli took over as skipper, everything changed. In the past five years, be it catching or ground-fielding or even endurance whilst batting, India have turned out to be one of the best sides in the world and the incumbent players have set the benchmark so high that fielding has become an inevitable part of the selection process of the players.
The team’s head coach Ravi Shastri believes that the one man who is solely responsible for bringing about the fitness revolution in the country is skipper Kohli. Shastri revealed how the Indian skipper was ready to put his body through hell and beyond to attain supreme fitness and how the 31-year-old’s mindset to be the best resulted in him achieving his goal.
"When you talk about fitness, the leadership came from the top and that is Virat. He is not a guy to mess around,” Shastri said in a Sky Sports podcast.
"He woke up one morning and said if 'I want to play this game I want to be the fittest player in the world and compete against the best in all conditions' and he let his body go through one hell of a lot.”
In fact, Kohli himself in an interview last year revealed how he ‘hated looking at the man in the mirror’ and believed it was necessary for him to lose weight to embark on his journey towards greatness. A significant step that was taken by him for the same was to inculcate a vegan diet-plan, something that worked like a charm for the 31-year-old.
Shasti heaped praise on the Indian skipper for the sacrifices he’s made in order to be the best version of himself and stated that Kohli’s elite mentality is also rubbing off on his teammates and the young cricketers.
"It was not just the training but the sacrifices he made with his diet. I could see that change happening all the time. He got up one day and said 'Ravi, I'm vegetarian!'
"When he sets those standards, it rubs off on others. Test cricket for us is the biggest form. It's the benchmark. We want to set standards."
Under the tenureship of Shastri, India attained the number one spot in ODIs, T20Is and Tests, while also creating history by winning the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia for the first time.
