Virat Kohli

India 🇮🇳

A chubby teenager from West Delhi shot to fame when he led the U-19 Indian team to World Cup glory in Malaysia in 2008. That same year, he got picked up by Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL and also made his debut for the senior Indian team as well. Finding a regular spot in the Indian team was not possible and so the then 20 year old went back to the domestic grind and dominated attacks while playing for Delhi. In the Emerging Players tournament in 2009, he scored 398 runs in 7 innings with two centuries and two fifties. 

The selectors gave him another chance and this time he made sure that he made full use of the opportunity as he scored his maiden ODI hundred against Sri Lanka in December 2009. In 2011, he was then selected in the Indian World Cup squad for the home World Cup where he scored his 1st century in World Cups against Bangladesh in India's first match of the tournament. The most crucial knock from his bat came in the final at Wankhede Stadium when he scored 35 runs and stitched a partnership of 83 runs with his fellow Delhi mate Gautam Gambhir after the fall of two stalwarts - Sehwag and Tendulkar. That set the platform for skipper M.S.Dhoni's fabled knock of 91* which ended the wait of 28 years of India winning the World Cup. 

Kohli's ODI career was on track and going smooth. He made his Test debut in July 2011 in West Indies when the senior players were rested. In 2012 on the tour of Australia, he scored an impressive 75 on the bouncy Perth wicket in the 3rd Test and followed it up with a century at Adelaide which was India's only century of the disastrous tour. He was the highest run-scorer for India in ODIs for three consecutive calendar years - 2010, 2011 and 2012 and won the ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2012. He also notched up his highest score in ODIs of 183* against Pakistan in the Asia Cup.

In 2014, he had a disastrous tour of England where he was exposed against the swinging Dukes ball by James Anderson and his technique was questioned. He managed to score just 134 runs in the 10 innings with just a solitary fifty to show. That was probably the lowest time in his career when he had self-doubts about himself and his technique. But in the same year, Indian team toured Australia where a completely different Virat was out in the middle. He scored 4 centuries on the tour and scored a century in each innings of the test when he was appointed the Captain of the Indian team after M.S. Dhoni quit test cricket in the middle of the tour. 

In 2016, it was probably the start of the period of "the Virat Kohli dominance era." He scored runs left, right and center. In the IPL, he scored 973 runs which is probably inhuman to even think of but the fact that he actually managed to do it is just insane. In the 2016 T20 World Cup, he was the highest scorer for India and also played a brilliant innings in the semi-final against West Indies but sadly India crashed out of the World Cup and Kohli was awarded the "Player of the Tournament" award for a 2nd successive T20 World Cup.

He went on to become the fastest man to reach 10,000 runs in the ODIs. In 2023, he broke the long-standing record of Sachin Tendulkar of 49 ODI centuries when he completed his 50th ODI century against New Zealand.