Virat Kohli Biography

Virat Kohli (5 November 1988) is a renowned Indian international cricketer. Currently, he is the captain of the India national team. Due to his excellent performance in the field, he is often regarded as one of the top batsmen in the world. He also plays for the IPL (Indian Premier League) team Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Personal Life

He is the son of Prem and Saroj Kohli and has an elder brother and sister, Vikash and Bhavna. He did his schooling from Vishal Bharti Public School and Saviour Convent Senior Secondary School. He is married to Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma. The couple tied the knot on 11 December 2017 in Florence, Italy.

Career

He came into the spotlight after playing for Delhi against Karnataka in a Ranji Trophy match. Kohli, as team’s captain, led the team to victory in the 2008 U/19 Cricket World Cup held in Malaysia. He was highly praised for making several tactical bowling changes during the tournament. Kohli was the key factor in India’s victory at the 2009 Emerging Players Tournament in Australia. His Indian Premier League performance has improved swiftly since the first season in 2008.

Virat Kohli made his debut in One Day Internationals against Sri Lanka in the Idea Cup in 2008. He scored his first half-century, 54 runs, in the 4th match and helped India win the series. This was also the first one-day series win of India against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. He played in the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy and got a chance to play in the 4th ODI when Sri Lanka toured India in December 2009. He scored his first ODI century, making India win the series 3 – 1. In June 2010, Virat was declared vice-captain of India for the Tri-series against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. He became the fastest Indian to score 1000 runs in ODI cricket in this series. In 2010, he was India’s leading run-scorer with 995 runs, including 3 centuries from 25 matches with an average of 47.38.

Virat Kohli was chosen over Suresh Raina in the 2011 Cricket World Cup and became the first Indian to score a century in a World Cup debut. Between 1st January 2009 and 1st September 2011, he was India’s second highest run-scorer in ODIs with 1,994 runs at an average of 47.47. Kohli attained his career’s best second spot in the ICC Player Rankings for ODI batsmen after the end of the India-Sri Lanka series in August 2012. He was named ‘ODI Cricketer of the Year’ at the ICC annual award function in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He was appointed as the vice-captain of the ODI team in 2012. Ever since, he has captained the team many times in the absence of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He was also handed-over the Test captaincy after Dhoni declared his retirement in 2014. He is also the captain of Indian national team.

Records and Achievements

He has the fastest ODI century; is the fastest to 10 ODI centuries and 5,000 ODI runs
He is the second batsman in the world to have scored 1,000 or more ODI runs for four consecutive calendar years
He is the fastest batsman to score 1,000 runs, in which most runs are in a calendar year and most fifties in the format
He scored most runs in a single tournament, both the World Twenty20 and the IPL
He is the first Indian batsman to have scored two test double centuries as a captain
He is also the fastest Indian cricketer to reach 3,000 runs in ODIs
Virat scored 183 runs, the highest score by any batsman in ODI against Pakistan
He has most runs in a calendar year in ODIs for 2011
Virat was chosen ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year 2012, and ICC World ODI XI of the year 2012 and 2014
He is a recipient of the Arjuna Award, 2013
He was chosen CEAT International Cricketer of the Year, for years 2011-12 and 2013-14
BCCI’s Polly Umrigar Award for international cricketer of the year went to Virat for the years 2011-12 and 2014-15.

Apart from these, Kohli has received many other awards like ‘Man of the Match’ awards in Test Cricket; ‘Man of the Match’ awards in ODI Cricket; ‘Man of the Series’ awards; ‘Man of the Match’ awards in T20 cricket, and many more.