Star India batter Virat Kohli, 36, has hinted that he might not get the opportunity to play another Test series in Australia. The former India captain also admitted that he has adjusted mentally to the batting failures, which have become an increasingly regular part of his game in the last few years. Kohli cited his ordinary run against Australia in an away series as a case in point, as he went downhill after making a hundred in the first Test at Perth.

“If you ask me the intensity of how disappointed I’ve been… for me the most recent Australia tour would be the one that’s most fresh. So, it might feel the most intense to me. But I can’t look at it that way. I might not have an Australia tour again in me in four years’ time.

“I don’t have the chance to correct it. So you have to make peace with whatever’s happened in your life. Like in 2014 (against England) I still had the chance to go in 2018 and do what I did. It might not have been the case.” Kohli said the key to keep away from pressure will be to shut himself out of the outside noises.

“Once you start thinking of the disappointment from the outside, then you start burdening yourself way more. That’s something that I’ve surely experienced in Australia as well. Because I got a good score in the first Test. I thought, right, let’s go.

“There’s going to be another big series for me. It didn’t turn out that way. How do you cope up with this? For me, it’s just about acceptance. This is what happened. I’m going to be honest with myself,” he noted.

Kohli conceded that he has gone a bit “overboard” with his emotional on-field reactions.

“I do have tendencies to kind of go overboard. I’ve never shied away from that. For a lot of people, it might not have been something that they’re able to process. But for me, it always comes from the right place.

“My competitiveness has not gone down. You can still be aggressive in your mind, but you don’t necessarily need to express it out there every now and then out of frustration, which I have.” Kohli, however, said he could have shown more restraint on some of those occasions.

“I mean, in the recent past as well, which is not a great thing, to be honest, I don’t feel great about those things myself. You may think that there’s some people who criticise you for that. But actually, I think there’s a fair few more people who actually enjoy watching you do that,” he added.

(With Added Inputs)

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