From being chubby to becoming one of the fittest athletes in the world, the transformation of batting maestro Virat Kohli is nothing less than extraordinary and inspirational. He has set the benchmark for fitness in the Indian cricket team as well as for athletes all around the world. It won’t be wrong to say that he brought a revolution to the Indian cricket team during his captaincy tenure, by setting a benchmark in terms of fitness.
Today, he is by far the fittest cricketer going around in world cricket today. However, he wasn’t always a fitness freak. As per the reports, it was upon the advice of the then head coach of team India Duncan Fletcher that he decided to change his diet regime for good and he turned out to be a different beast, and ever since then, there has been no turning backs.
But before the transformation happened, Virat Kohli was a big foodie. Kohli, who hails from Delhi, loves his ‘Chola bhaturas’ and other North Indian dishes. He was a huge food-lover and he didn’t even care about landing in trouble because of the same.
Well, recently, Virat’s ex-teammate Pradeep Sangwan revealed how they once were chased by unruly guys in South Africa for venturing out in an insecure locality.
In his column for The Indian Express, Sangwan said: “He had been my room partner for seven-eight years in junior cricket. He used to love food, street food especially. He was a foodie, korma rolls, chicken rolls were his favourite. We were in South Africa with India under 19 team, and someone told him that you get a nice mutton roll at someplace, but it’s not in a secure neighbourhood,”
For the unversed, Pradeep Sangwan was a part of Virat Kohli led India’s Under-19 side when they won the ICC W19 World Cup in 2008. In his column, Sangwan further added that despite knowing the risks Kohli compelled him to accompany him in the area to eat his favorite rolls. He said:
“Our driver too told us that food is nice but recently some fight took place around there and someone chopped someone’s hand there. I got scared, but he said, ‘chal yaar, wahan chalenge’ (no biggie, dude, let’s go) and he took me there too. We ate and a few random guys chased us, but we just drove our car back and only stopped after reaching our place,”
Pradeep also talked about the decision of Virat Kohli to change his diet regime in 2012 and how he wanted to change his game. He said:
“After playing for India, he came to play for us in 2012 and this was the time he went to another level in terms of his diet. We used to call him ‘cheeku-motu’ in the team. But in 2012 he came up with a plan where he began to look after his fitness. He began to follow a strict diet. He was determined to lose his weight and wanted to shed a few kilos. He wanted to be a good fielder, he was a safe fielder then too but in terms of reflexes, he felt he was not up to the mark. He wanted to be the best fielder. He liked to bat for hours in the nets and then he would go do some more knocking.”
