Virat Kohli has been the elitist benchmark of fitness standards among cricketers not only in India, but he has been looked up to by players from across the globe. Kohli is one of the fittest athletes in the world, and has worked hard on his fitness goals, and made sacrifices to achieve the high levels of fitness in order to succeed on the pitch.
Now, the latest release from the NCA revealed the list of all the Indian players who had been at the facility in Bangalore for treatment and rehabilitation in the 2021/22 season. Unsurprisingly, Virat Kohli’s name was not in the list because the former Indian skipper has not needed any injury treatment at the NCA.
23 centrally contracted Indian players are present in this list, but not Kohli. This has further highlighted the incredible fitness standards Kohli has set that he didn’t suffer any major injury for which rehabilitation was needed despite being India’s all-format player.
The report prepared by BCCI CEO Hemang Amin details the work done at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) and in the last season.
“A total of 96 complex injuries to 70 players were treated by the NCA medical team during this period,” said the report.
Out of 70 players, 23 were from the senior Indian men’s team, 25 were from India A/Targeted, 1 was from India U-19, 7 were from the senior Women’s team and 14 were from states.
The 23 centrally contracted players included skipper Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Shikhar Dhawan, Hardik Pandya, Umesh Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Rishabh Pant, Ishant Sharma, Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Mayank Agarwal, Yuzvendra Chahal, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ajinkya Rahane, R Ashwin, Axar Patel and Wriddhiman Saha.
This report is a testament to Virat Kohli’s admirable fitness
There are several youngsters in this list, some even 7-8 years younger than Kohli.
“To be fair, a lot of these injuries were on-field. Some were unlucky with fractures (Surya). Some had multiple issues at different times.
“But you have to give it to Kohli’s fitness that he has managed himself so well that he never had any hamstring or muscle related injuries, primarily because of the kind of fitness work he does throughout the year,” a BCCI source said.
Other youngsters who had gone to the NCA for injury troubles in the last season were Shubman Gill, Prithvi Shaw, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Venkatesh Iyer, KS Bharat, Kamlesh Nagarkoti, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Karthik Tyagi, Navdeep Saini and Rahul Chahar.
As far as memory goes, Kohli has only missed one match – the Johannesburg Test in January due to a back niggle, but Kohli was back in the next Test.
