"Was In Tears": Vijay Shankar On Facing Tough Time After Nidahas Trophy Final

Vijay Shankar, out-of-favour from the Indian cricket team, was given chances to prove his mettle for the national team but failed to make it count. One such incident came during the Nidahas trophy final against Bangladesh in 2018.

Vijay Shankar failed to put bat to the ball. He managed to score 17 runs off 19 deliveries when India needed a batsman to go all-out. In such circumstances, fortunately for India, their wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik saved the day with a quick-fire knock of 29 runs off eight deliveries.

However, Vijay Shankar was severely criticized for his poor contribution.

These things can affect you: Vijay Shankar

Social media has given fans a liberty to thrash cricketers for the poor performance. Vijay Shankar said, even though, he is not much into social media, these things can affect a person.

“With social media, whatever you do, people have the freedom to comment on it. They have their own views and they can come up with anything. I’m someone who’s not much into social media. And even when you’re not into social media, it somehow gets to you. These things can definitely affect you. And it has definitely affected me when I made my T20 debut in Sri Lanka,” Vijay Shankar told Sportstar. 

Found it hard to go out of my house: Vijay Shankar

Recalling the tough time, Vijay Shankar said, he found it really difficult to go out of the house. He also added that, there were situations when people would come out to ask him about his performance in the match.

Moreover, he would break down every time he went to sleep. But Shankar trained hard during the phase to deal with it.

“It was pretty hard for me to come out of it. For the first one week, I found it really hard to go out of my house. Because, people would come up to me, and they would always ask me about the negative things that had happened. After the first two-three days, I was literally shattered. Every time I went back to sleep, I was in tears. So, all I could do to come out of it was train really hard. I didn’t give myself any free time, for that’s when you generally get a lot of negative thoughts. Immediately after that tour, we had the IPL and I had a very good season. Everything changed from there. So, according to me, changing the perception is very, very easy. It just changes overnight.”