"I’m a young man, relatively speaking. Thirty-six. But I wake as if ninety-six. After three decades of sprinting, stopping on a dime, jumping high and landing hard, my body no longer feels like my body, especially in the morning." - Andre Agassi, Open
The body of an international sportsperson often resembles that of a battle hardened soldier. The rigours of sports at the highest level leaves the frame of an athlete in tatters and anyone who has played sports at a competitive level for a few years would understand that.
While fitness levels have definitely gone up and so has the longevity of the champions on the field, proper rest is often the need of the hour for these modern day gladiators. There have been a few narratives since the news emerged that Indian captain Virat Kohli would be rested during the home series against Sri Lanka. Some bizzare, some uninformed and some borderline balderdash. When and whether Kohli needs to rest himself is a decision that he and the Indian team management are best suited to take, but it is important to understand the context behind such a call.
Numbers often don't tell the true story but they seldom fail to point towards the right direction. And in this case, the numbers do shed light on the Indian captain's massive workload. Virat Kohli so far, which is till the first ODI against New Zealand at Mumbai, has played a total of 48 competitive matches this year, including Tests, ODIs and T20s (international and domestic).
This amounts to a total of 69 days of international cricket. Add to that 48 days of pre-match training for each of these matches and that puts the number of action packed days at 117, which is a spectacularly high number. Among his contemporaries who perform a similar role in other top international sides, only Hashim Amla with an aggregate of 120 days of action has been busier than Kohli, and that too because the Indian captain missed the fourth Test against Australia and the initial few matches of the IPL due to injury, perhaps his only break from cricket in 2017.