Star batter Virat Kohli said he stepped down from captaincy to be in a ‘happy space’ as the relentless scrutiny of leading the national team and Royal Challengers Bengaluru had become ‘too much in the end’.

“At one point, it did become tough for me because there was just too much happening in my career,” said Kohli in the 'RCB Bold Diaries' podcast. “I was captaining India for a period of 7-8 years. I captained RCB for nine years. There were expectations on me from a batting perspective in every game that I played.

“I didn't have this sense that the attention was off me. If it wasn't captaincy, it would be batting. I was exposed to it 24x7. It did get very tough on me, and it did get too much in the end,” said the 36-year-old. Kohli relinquished his RCB leadership role for Faf du Plessis and now plays under the captaincy of Rajat Patidar.

He had resigned as India’s T20 captain after the 2021 World Cup and stepped down from India’s Test captaincy a year later. Kohli also took a break from cricket in 2022. “...I stepped down because I felt like if I've decided I want to be in this place, I need to be happy.

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“I need to have a space in my life where I can just come and play my cricket without being judged, without being looked at as what are you going to do this season and what's going to happen now.”

Kohli is the leading run-getter in IPL 2025 with 505 runs from 11 innings, with a high score of 73 not out. He has hit seven fifties this season in the franchise league.

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