Was literally shattered by all the criticism that followed the Nidahas Trophy final, shares Vijay Shankar

India allrounder Vijay Shankar’s debut in international cricket was not an ideal one, with him failing to stand up to the expectation in the Nidahas Trophy, but the criticism that followed from all over social media is what made it even worse. The night, which is famous for Dinesh Karthik’s cameo which saved India quite some humiliation, is most probably the darkest night of Shankar’s life.

The Tamil Nadu lad opined that the internet or the social media gives people the liberty to comment on every other thing without a second thought how devastating it can be for someone. Shankar pointed out that such comments or trolls affect the players drastically having experienced it first hand.

"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,” Shankar told Sportstar.

Shankar went on to share how he was emotionally shattered as all the negativity took its toll on him. But he didn't give up and worked hard to earn it all back with an impressive IPL outing for Delhi Daredevils and then Sunrisers Hyderabad. Shankar believes that working and keeping oneself occupied with something or the other all the time is the only way out of the mess.

"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."