'My father till the time he was in this world he has been always been my super hero.'
India captain Virat Kohli on Saturday said his career path became simple due to decisions taken by his father, whom he termed as his 'super hero' in real life.
"My father till the time he was in this world he has been always been my super hero," Kohli said in Mumbai when asked who was his 'super hero' in real life.
"Many people can inspire or motivate you, but when someone sets an example in front of you, the impact is different. The examples he (my father) set in front of me, like when I was playing cricket when I was young, the decisions he took with regard to my career. He could have told me different dimension. Due to his personality and decisions, my focus always remained that I will go ahead on the basis of hard work and not by any other way," Kohli, one of the most successful batsman of the modern era, recollected.
"Because of this, he has been my super hero. Due to his personality and decisions, my career path became simple that I had to move ahead only by working hard.
If I succeed then it was written in my destiny, if it was not there, then I was not good enough. After that I stopped making excuses, and I think it happened because of him, as things happened in front of me and so he is my super hero," added the India captain.
His father Prem passed away suddenly in 2006, when he was in the middle of a Ranji Trophy match for Delhi, but he continued to play.
"It was a very hard time in my life. That happened in 2006. And that was my first season for the Delhi Ranji Trophy team, which is a first class team. And I remember I was playing a game, I was batting overnight, and it used to be four days game back then. And he passed away around I think 2:30 or 3 in the morning. He had a heart attack. He was going through a time where you know he had a clot in his brain and the left side of his body got paralyzed and it was a very tough time for the whole family. And you know he couldn't take that stress after a while," Kohli was quoted as saying in an interview to CNN’s 'Talk Asia' in 2016.
"I called my coach in the morning... I told him this had happened and he was in shock as well. So he asked me what I wanted to do. I said I want to go and play because, you know, for me not completing in a cricket game was a sin. I was batting overnight and then I felt like ‘how can I be batting and not go and play’?
"So that was something that I just could not digest... that I can't go into a cricket match. It came instinctively to me that I should go, I should continue, but that was a moment where I felt changed me as a person; that really gave me that strength and motivation to actually live my dream and fulfill my dreams and my father’s dream as well of playing for the country and playing for a long time and playing with a lot of pride because that’s where I, maybe, get the confidence that people speak about.
"So the importance that the sport holds in my life is very, very high. And it’s above anything else you know."
