This is Virat’s speech when he explained about his past and how he improved himself and achieved his dreams.
He says that Motivation is just about winning, “Jis din passion khatam ho gya us din I will stop playing.”
I will never want to drag myself more than my body can take. “Jis din I will feel like, I am standing in a field like thinking why I am doing this, matlab wo passion nahi hai jeetne ka, wo energy nahi hai jeetne ki, main nahi khel sakta, khel hi nahi sakta” and It will just like participation thing that you have a skill and idea how to play, then you make some runs and give performance, if I can’t contribute to the team, I can’t play.
I visualise a lot. I don’t go out there to prove anything to anyone. It’s a different kind of thing, it’s like a drug, and you want to go after that feeling again and again. You know that feeling of victory, that’s something that you can’t experience without being in that moment. I go out there to compete; I go out there to win the game. At the crease, where I am batting, that’s where I am closes to myself, I don’t worry about anyone around me. I hate losing. There is no point putting in so much effort into one thing and then not having the desire to be best. You have to have that kind of belief. Should not forget it along the way, what made you pickup that bat and actually go out there, wanting to hit that ball. That feeling is something which is very special and close to me still and so if I sacrifice so much in my life to do what I am doing now , I want to be the best that I can be .
I always wanted to be one of the top players in the world for sure and along my early days in my career as well, there will a lot of people , doubted the way I have gone about my game. Even now the doubters and haters all around, but one thing is for sure that I always believed in myself, I always believed in my heart that if I work hard 120% every day of my life. I am answerable to no one.
It’s hard for me to believe sometimes as well that I have got these many centuries in international cricket or one day cricket separately and I just try to forget that moment quickly because I don’t want to think about it too much and then start doubting myself thinking that its came too early for me because I want to achieve something really big and I want to be known as a player who won a lot of games for India and who scored a lot of runs for the country. So I get that thought and I let go of it because then I sat down and thought all the grades of the game which I started at very early age. So it’s not such a bad thing to start doing things when you are young and keep learning. You will have phases but as long as you can stick and sustain, that’s a very good thing. That’s the attitude I have taken.
Once I saw myself into a mirror and ask myself “you can’t look like that if you an international cricketer” I was like how the hell are you going to continue like this if you don’t take care of yourself.
From next day onwards I just changed everything about my diet, hitting the gym 2 hours a day, just taking a day off in a week, eating proper lean food. I got away from all kind of junk food and within 7-8 months, I lost about 6- 7 kgs and then from then on it became such an addiction because I saw the result on the field. I felt quicker, lighter and felt more focused and then found out that this was the path I want to walk on.
I wanted to get back in the team so badly because for the 13 months I was not selected. It was sort of a madness that I want to get back up; I want to get back into the team. Those 1 3 months, I was so focused, that I want to get back into team, and my performances were such that the selectors could not ignore me after a while, so eventually I got my chance again and luckily I have never been out of the team since then.
At the end of 2012, when we came back from Australia and I figured out that the difference or gap that we have with other countries and I thought if we don’t change the way, we are playing or I don’t change the way I am playing or the way I am training, thinking or eating, I can never be among the best players in the world and there is no point in competing if you don’t want to be best. So I wanted to be the best version of myself and then I based everything around that vision and then my training, my diet, my approach towards the game, everything changed. I know that I was not the most skilled sport person when I came in but the only thing that was constant was working hard on myself, my game and that was the time when I realised that if the Indian team has to be the best team in the world, we need to go ahead in a certain manner.
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