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Former Team India keeper-batter Robin Uthappa reckoned that the extra burden of captaincy might have restricted Virat Kohli from expressing himself as the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain.
As soon as the burden took down from his shoulders, the batter found a whole new meaning to his existence with the team. Virat Kohli was the captain of RCB from 2011 to 2023.
Robin Uthappa explains why Virat Kohli-led RCB was not successful in IPL
During this period, the star-studded line-up of the franchise chose multiple moments of brilliance in multiple games, but remained in search of success in the Indian Premier League. Virat Kohli’s performance as the captain of the team, and his performance in the previous few seasons in a non-leadership role, is visibly massive.
Robin Uthappa observed that when Kohli was the leader of the team, he tried to play most of the games with a different approach. Rather than focusing on the team game, he mostly tried to win matches for RCB on an individual basis, which might not have allowed the batter to touch the peak when he was at his prime for Team India.
“This era of expressing yourselves more has unlocked him. But the captaincy not being on him anymore has unlocked him the most. When he was captain, he was so driven to take the team to victory by himself. Because of that, he played a certain way to produce results that he wanted to for himself and for the team. Today that doesn’t exist for him,” CommBoxTV YouTube channel.
Virat Kohli became spiritual in find of the purpose of life
Kohli’s batting average in IPL 2022 was slightly more than 22, which marked one of the lowest points in his career. Uthappa stated that because of repeated unfruitful seasons, Virat was under pressure, in search of a ray of light. The batter, without a proper purpose, lost his form as well. Later, he found his true spirit through spirituality.
“That took a while, and I remember there was a period of wilderness for him, where he was trying to find where he fell in the whole scheme of things within the group. Once captaincy went away from him, for a period it almost felt like he felt lost and without purpose.”
“That affected his form and his demeanor a bit. He then went soul searching and became even more spiritual. Then, he finally found a place where he can exist,” the former cricketer added.
The evolution of Virat Kohli is not over yet
In IPL 2023, Kohli took his batting to the next level. In the back-to-back four seasons, his batting averages were well over 50. Kohli’s evolution as a batter continued in this year’s IPL as well. The batter, whose average strike rate in the league is 134.79, performed in IPL 2026 with a strike rate of 165.84, scoring 675 runs in total.
At the age of 37, when most of the cricketers choose to stay away from professional cricket, Virat Kohli is still in contention to play in the ODI World Cup in 2027.
