“Don’t Treat Me Like A Cricketer…”: Virat Kohli Surprised Royal Challengers Bangalore’s Fitness Coach.

Virat bears the responsibility for this change (passion for fitness). Since 2009, I’ve been seeing him. In 2014, he stated that he has a stiff back and that you could help him with it. We only had six weeks, so we couldn’t do much.
However, in 2015, he stated that you should play a larger role. So I told him that we would create a template for you and that I would have to make significant changes to the training you are currently receiving.
He asked a lot of technical questions, and after several back-and-forths, he said, ‘OK, let’s get started,’ said Basu. Even Basu, who has worked with numerous athletes from various sports, was taken aback by Kohli’s dedication to fitness.
Virat saw me training Deepika Pallikal (India squash player and Dinesh Karthik’s wife) when she was in the top 10. So Kohli told me to stop treating me like a cricketer and start treating me like an individual athlete. So I told him he needed to train like an Olympic athlete, and I used to quote Novak Djokovic at the time.
I’m not tired of saying it, but I’ve never seen a guy like Virat Kohli. He can do the most mundane things in life every day, regardless of whether he is performing or not (on the field). That zeal and extraordinary passion for excellence, on the other hand, is mind-boggling. It helped me explain my syllabus to him, Basu said.
Basu, who also worked with Team India, said that once Kohli, then India and RCB captain, was convinced of the fitness pattern, it was simple for him to get the message across to other players, citing Dinesh Karthik as an example.
People are always caught up in visual fitness; they look at you (an athlete) and say, oh yes, he looks so fit. Athletic fitness, on the other hand, is quite different. Yes, Virat is very fit and looks (fit) as well, thanks to the cosmetics, and he is blessed in that way. He wields enormous power.
Dinesh Karthik is the same way…his resilience and toughness on the cricket field are incredible. He’s like the Ryan Giggs of cricket. He’s never been seriously injured and rarely misses time on the field. So, once the captain was brought into the theory, everything else fell into place.
My theory is that once you hit one, you hit five, once you hit five you’ll hit 50 and once you hit 50, you hit the nation, he further added.