Indian batting star Virat Kohli is on a mission of his life. Besides being the most prolific batsman of his generation, he has another amazing goal. The 27-year-old Delhi dasher wants to be the best athlete in the world. His Royal Challengers Bangalore trainer Shanker Basu revealed.
Kohli is a very focused cricketer and worked immensely on his fitness and strength that help him play marathon innings. The most important part of Virat’s batting is his one or twos during his innings. He quick singles or twos often make his fans think how Kohli achieved this fitness.
He is an acrobatic fielder too.
“Virat has decided to become the best athlete in the world and sky is the limit. There a lot of role models ahead of him in terms of sheer athletic abilities and he will never shy away from competition. He will grab it with both hands,” Basu told ‘bcci.tv’.
The RCB trainer feels the fit Virat is set to raise the bar for an athlete. In the just concluded IPL Virat has scored whopping 973 runs, which have broken all the previous records of the IPL and other franchise-based cricket.
His orthodox batting and outstanding footwork and technique helped to conquer the bowlers.
Basu said many athletes think the reason behind their fitness in their coach, but Virat always believes in himself.
“My association with him dates back to eight years through IPL,” he said.
Basu has also given an insight how Virat approaches to his own fitness.
“Virat will never challenge you once he is convinced about your methods. I found an athlete who was ready to go through the grind and work hard consistently whenever the need arose. He is very good with his nutrition plans and discipline factors.
“He has also made a lot of lifestyle changes. Kudos to him. I was just a tool. I only introduced him to the right kind of strength work which was already building thanks to my predecessors. When I joined the Indian team full time, I was able to spend more quality time on a daily basis. That probably was the icing on the cake as about 90 per cent of the work was done by him and I just provided the finishing touch,” said Basu.
The Indian batting starlet himself said about the changes he experienced in his body after he regularly started lifting weights since the tour of Sri Lanka last year.
The RCB trainer revealed how Kohli kept raising fitness bar since he started working at the Bangalore franchise.
Kohli once said that he can’t hit sixes like others in the IPL, but this season he alone hit 38 sixes which is the most this season and 15 more than last season.
Basu revealed how Kohli kept raising the fitness bar ever since they started working at RCB.
“In September, we got an assessment of his muscle mass. At the end of the season, we wanted to see if there was a change and what we noticed was his muscle mass had increased dramatically. In the last six months, he has put a lot of time in developing his strength, mass, and power,” he said.