One of the biggest reasons behind the dominance of the Indian team is their fitness and ability to spend long hours on the field without dropping their intensity. Led by captain Virat Kohli, the side places tremendous importance on staying fit and focusing on a specific diet. The captain has now revealed that the decision to quit meat back in 2016 was perhaps his best one.
“For the last year and a half I have been vegetarian. Before that, I was consuming meat which was working well for me. In a phase, it worked really well for me. I think from 2016 January to about the end of the IPL. Before we started playing Test cricket, we only had 5-6 months of T20 cricket so I was just doing lifting and I was eating a lot of red meat, you know consuming a lot of meat,” Kohli told India Today.
ALSO READ: ‘Maybe that was my ego talking’: Kohli narrates pain of WC semis loss
He also credited Team India’s former fitness trainer Shankar Basu for understanding his body and for spending time with him.
“So I became a very explosive athlete and I was able to play the power game really well but then Test matches came along. I had to put on a bit more fat, consume more carbohydrates. I think having Basu sir around was the biggest help for me. Like he would understand my body precisely the way I do and he would tell me what to eat when. How to train and how not to train. When to take rest, what to do while resting, how to recover. And I just followed everything to the T,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“So I became a very explosive athlete and I was able to play the power game really well but then Test matches came along. I had to put on a bit more fat, consume more carbohydrates. I think having Basu sir around was the biggest help for me. Like he would understand my body precisely the way I do and he would tell me what to eat when. How to train and how not to train. When to take rest, what to do while resting, how to recover. And I just followed everything to the T,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}“I would just listen to him and then I started understanding it myself. So he would tell me you know what you need to do and I would comeback fresh when I took a break because I understood it myself. I wanted to learn. It was similar to batting you know when you go out there and play, you get a hundred, it’s not by chance,” the captain went on to add.