Former Indian skipper Virat Kohli has completed 15 years in International cricket as he went on to make his debut on 18 Aug 2008 against Sri Lanka in an ODI game. Virat Kohli has achieved so many records in a span of 15 years and currently, he has been the number 1 player to look forward to in world cricket.
Virat Kohli’s insane records are majorly due to his extraordinary dedication and commitment shown on the field and here in this article, we will look at some untold stories of Virat Kohli in his career.
Virat Kohli started his cricket career in 1998 by joining the West Delhi Cricket Association. He was also selected to play U-19 Cricket in July, 2006 and later made his FC debut by playing Ranji Trophy match for Delhi in Nov, 2006 against Tamil Nadu. Notably, he also played Ranji One-Day Trophy 2005/06 edition way back in Feb, 2006 (List A debut) itself for Delhi team.
Virat Kohli spent his childhood in the Uttam Nagar area of Delhi and he studied at Vishal Bharti Public School.
Virat Kohli was playing his debut Ranji Trophy season for the Delhi team in the 2006/07 edition. On 18th Dec 2006, Virat Kohli’s father Prem aged 54 passed away unfortunately due to a heart attack. King Kohli who was playing a Ranji game against Karnataka at that time faced a tough time on whether to cremate his father (or) continue playing his innings for Delhi on 3rd day of the match.
The news of Kohli’s dad passing away reached the dressing room of the Delhi team as well and even Chetanya Nanda was informed that Kohli won't come to bat and hence he was asked to pad up. But in contrast, his teammates, opposition, and even the match officials were shocked to see Kohli arriving in the dressing room and he decided to bat for his side. He scored 90 runs for Delhi and helped their side to avoid a defeat after playing for a span of 281 minutes.
Virat Kohli as captain of team India helped their side to lift the U19 WC in 2008. Virat Kohli played a key role by scoring 235 runs from six games in that tournament and notably, he was the third-highest run-scorer of U19 WC 2008 only behind Tanmay Srivastava and Kieran Powell.
Aggressive captaincy from King Kohli has helped India’s U19 team to defend a small total of 159 runs in the final game and helped their side to win the title for the second time after 2000. Kohli’s teammate Ravindra Jadeja was also part of Indian U19 team in 2008.
Virat Kohli was drafted as a U-19 player for a price of $50K in the IPL 2008 auction by Royal Challengers Bangalore. Kohli was about to be bought by Delhi Capitals in IPL 2008 after his brilliant performance with the bat in the U19 WC tournament but later they didn’t pick him and went for Pradeep Sangwan instead.
Virat Kohli despite being the U19 WC winning skipper, wasn’t the first pick in the U19 draft and Delhi passed away Kohli at that time because they felt their team didn’t need another batsman with the likes of Sehwag, Gambhir, AB de Villiers, etc. being in the side that time.
Indian selector Dilip Vengsarkar selected Virat Kohli for the tour of Sri Lanka in a five-match ODI series and he was given an opportunity to open the innings for team India as the selector felt he was more technically sound batsman when compared to that Tamil Nadu player.
Gary Kirsten and MS Dhoni weren’t much convinced to play Kohli as an opener in that five-match ODI series against Sri Lanka, but it was Vengsarkar’s suggestion that helped Kohli to get a spot at that time. BCCI president N.Srinivasan wasn’t happy with Virat Kohli playing over Tamil Nadu player Subramaniam Badrinath and later it cost Vengsarkar’s place as selector since he was replaced by Kris Srikkanth.
Virat Kohli despite making his international debut in 2008, never got to play any format other than ODIs till June 2010 thus he missed out on playing both T20 WC 2009 & T20 WC 2010 for India.
T20 WC 2010 happened predominantly in May month and post that India was about to tour the Zimbabwe team. India sent a young team under Suresh Raina for that tour and Virat Kohli got to make his T20I debut only in June 2010.
Virat Kohli after playing five-match T20I series against Sri Lanka in August 2008 never got to play international cricket for the next year until September 2009 when he played Compaq Cup 2009 final game & Champions Trophy 2009 tournament.
Virat Kohli captained three games for his franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in IPL 2011 in the absence of his team’s regular skipper Daniel Vettori. Virat Kohli got an opportunity to lead his side at the age of 22 only. Kohli started to become the rising player of team India after his stunning performance with the bat in 2010 and as a reward, he got an opportunity to play as stand-in captain for RCB in 2011.
Virat Kohli played a huge role to win the ICC WC 2011 trophy by scoring a century against Bangladesh in the first game of his WC career. Notably, he remains to be the only Indian batsman to smash a hundred in WC debut. Also his key partnership with Gautam Gambhir in the 2011 WC final played a pivotal role for his team to cross the winning line in that run-chase.
Virat Kohli scored 176 runs at an average of 58.66 in CT 2013 tournament with his important knocks of 58* vs Sri Lanka and 43 vs England coming in knock-out stages like semi-finals and finals respectively.
Virat Kohli played a terrific knock against Sri Lanka in Hobart during CB tri-series 2012 where the Indian team needed to chase their target inside 40 overs to get a bonus point to qualify for the finals of the tournament. King Kohli smashed unbeaten 133 runs from just 86 balls and helped his side to chase a 320-plus total in just 36.4 overs.
Although, India didn’t qualify for the CB 2012 finals the chairman of selectors Kris Srikkanth appointed Virat Kohli as vice-captain of the national side starting from the Asia Cup 2012 tournament seeing his aggressive intent in that game considering the future prospect of the team.
Virat Kohli recorded his highest-ever ODI score of 183 runs against Pakistan in the Asia Cup 2012. Kohli remains to be the only batsman to score 150-plus runs in an Asia Cup game still now and notably, he holds the record for smashing the highest individual score (183) against Pakistan in an ODI game.
Earlier players like Ganguly, and Dhoni also recorded the highest score of 183 runs in their careers and went on to become captain of the Indian team in the later stages of their careers. Virat Kohli also after scoring 183 runs with bat went on to lead the Indian team. Notably, the 2012 Asia Cup India vs Pakistan match was the last game of Sachin Tendulkar’s ODI career.
Virat Kohli got an opportunity to lead his side in the 2013 Tri-series (West Indies, Sri Lanka) on West Indies soil as MS Dhoni got to miss out first few games due to injury. Later under Virat Kohli, a young team was sent to tour Zimbabwe in 2013 for a five-match ODI series.
Virat Kohli as a part-time captain was given an opportunity to lead Asia Cup 2014 and later he did lead his team in the five-match ODI series against Sri Lanka also in 2014 before becoming a full-time captain of limited overs edition in 2017.
Virat Kohli during the tour of England in 2014 just managed to score only 134 runs from 10 innings in Test cricket at a batting average of 13.40. During that time he revealed that struggled a lot mentally as he felt no one was there to help him overcome his poor form despite being in a dressing room filled with team-mates and support staff.
He felt so lonely during that 2014 England test tour but later he modified his batting technique and went on to dominate the 2018 England tour in Test cricket by scoring tons and tons of runs.
Arguably, Virat Kohli is the most consistent batsman in men’s T20 WC history despite not being able to win a trophy. He was the leading run-scorer of the tournament in the 2014 & 2016 T20 WC where he won the Player of the Series award also. Unfortunately despite all his heroics Indian side were never able to win a trophy in the T20 WC post-2007.
Currently, Kohli is the highest run-scorer in T20 WC history as he scored 1141 runs from 25 innings at an insane batting average of 81.50. Notably, no other batsman has shown such consistency when it comes to T20 World Cups.
Virat Kohli got an opportunity to lead his test side during the 2014/15 tour to Australia, where in his debut game as captain itself he played an aggressive brand of cricket by scoring 115 & 141 runs in both innings. Despite India losing that Test game Kohli showed the whole world how India is going to play Test cricket in the future.
30th Dec 2014, remained to be last day of MS Dhoni’s Test career, and post that he announced his retirement unexpectedly and shocked the whole cricketing world. Dhoni’s successor Kohli took up the role of playing as captain in Test cricket and he went on to elevate the standard set by Team India by winning overseas tours.
Virat Kohli as captain in Tests won 40 out of 68 games which includes some intense series like winning 2-1 against Australia in 2018/19 and also India lead England by 2-1 margin in Tests during 2021.
Virat Kohli despite not winning a single IPL trophy, holds the record for scoring most runs, most centuries, most runs in an IPL edition, etc. Virat Kohli has performed consistently with the bat for his side in IPL making him to be the only player to score more than 7000 runs in this tournament history.
Virat Kohli’s best season with the bat remains to be in 2016 where he scored 973 runs (4 centuries) and helped his side to reach the finals as well but unfortunately lost the final game to SRH by just 8 runs.
Virat Kohli in his last two games against SRH & GT in IPL 2023 went on to smash two consecutive tons 100 & 101* respectively.
0 Comments