When it comes to fitness, former India captain Virat Kohli has set a new standard in the modern Indian cricket team. The much-debated yo-yo test was introduced under Kohli's captaincy, a fitness requirement that Indian cricketers must meet in order to be considered for team selection.
Kohli's legacy is defined more by how he revolutionized fitness standards in Indian cricket. Kohli, who recently played his 100th Test for India, has only missed a few games due to fitness concerns, demonstrating the 33-years-old's pain tolerance.
Former India physio Ashish Kaushik, who was with the Indian team during the ICC 2011 World Cup and Kohli's early years, emphasized this point with an anecdote from the tournament.
"His pain tolerance is phenomenal. Some players get affected by pain more than others - pain being a subjective marker - but Kohli has got a tremendous ability to endure pain and look for solutions. I remember he had some neck and jaw pain before the 2011 World Cup semi-final in Mohali but he would take everything extremely, extremely lightly, and somehow know that he can work through it," Kaushik told Cricbuzz.
Kohli's obsession with fitness, according to Kaushik, can be measured by the fact that he would always look up to the greatest athletes outside of cricket and strive to be on par with them.
"The same self-awareness and self-belief also allowed Kohli to take his fitness to a different level," he pointed out.
"A cricketer would at best compare himself to another cricketer but he was a guy who was willing to put himself out there and be compared with the best athletes in the world. Sometimes we don't realize how big that point is. That is not something that anybody does. Because then you're setting yourself a bar which is bloody hard to achieve. Just the fact that you are willing to do that means that you are willing to go all the way," he added.
