Rohit Sharma opens up on mental health

Rohit Sharma opens up on player’s struggle with mental health and its importance

After Virat’s confession, Rohit Sharma joined his teammate Virat Kohli in expressing the importance of mental health and the player’s struggle with it, during and post covid time.

During a chat with ‘Star Sports’, Kohli spoke about why he was required to have a break from cricket and how he had to ‘fake intensity’ in order to conceal that he was feeling ‘mentally down’. He said he did not touch a bat for a month for the first time in 10 years post the England tour.

“We do talk about these things a lot. Of late, when Covid-19 struck, this has been difficult for a lot of players, not just Virat himself,” Rohit told the media when asked about the same on the eve of India’s Asia Cup match against Pakistan, he showed empathy for everyone who has faced mental health issues.

Players Mental health

“A lot of players have gone through hard times mentally, staying in bubbles, not being able to go out of hotels and there is nothing wrong in it,” the skipper added.

Cricketers being elite sportspeople get to travel across the globe but in a post-COVID-19 world, the five-star hotels often felt like an elite jail, where one couldn’t enjoy the sun and sand at times. It did create issues.

“Because how you led your life until then was completely different because you had to stay in a bubble and inside the hotel for two months, quarantine. Every player had a way of responding to that and there is nothing wrong,” Rohit said.

That is also the reason why spacing out games and looking at workload has become so important, the skipper stressed. For him, it is important to have fresh players.

“If players have his view on that (mental health), we talk about that in our group and what they talk about being mentally fresh and how we can keep them fresh. Freshness is important. Mentally you need to be fresh. So mental health is important,” he added.

India is currently playing the Asia cup in UAE. Beaten Pakistan in their first match and will be playing against Hong Kong.