Virat Kohli

Virat Kohli IPL timeline

Virat Kohli is the only player to have played all the seasons of Indian Premier League for one team, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Riding on his popularity, RCB have become one of the most followed teams in the league.

RCB signed up Kohli after the youngster led India to victory in the U-19 World Cup in 2008. Since then he has been part of the Bangalore franchise and a fan favourite. Starting out at the franchise with stalwarts like Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid, but made his firm footing and started to grow under Daniel Vettori.

Kohli has been part of the RCB franchise since 2008, and led them from 2013 to 2021. Under his captaincy, RCB reached the IPL finals in 2016, where they lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad. Kohli is the highest run-scorer in IPL with 7971 runs, and holds the record for most centuries (8) in the league.

Kohli has also scored the most runs in a season (973 runs in 2016), for which he won the Orange Cap. In IPL 2024, he leads the Orange Cap race and may finish as the top run-getter of the season. His batting exploits in the 2024 season helped RCB do a turnaround to reach the playoffs after winning their last six league matches on the trot. The 2016 season was a purple patch for Kohli as he scored heavily and just by his run-scoring ability took RCB to the finals. In the same season he blasted four hundreds, the most by a batsman in a single edition.

The record of best partnerships in the IPL is also held by Kohli, with AB de Villiers 3123 runs, and with Chris Gayle 2787 runs.

When a young Virat Kohli led India to an Under-19 World Cup win in 2008, not many would have envisioned that his 18-year-old will one day become the face of Indian cricket. But he did and, in the process, emerged as the greatest ODI batter of all time. Kohli is to India today what Sachin Tendulkar was in the 1990s and the 2000s. For some, he is even greater than the Master Blaster, and who can blame them? The way Kohli transitioned Indian cricket, though his batting, fitness, captaincy and pure entertainment on the field, it's little doubt that he is the GOAT, pushing the likes of Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and the great Kapil Dev for that honour.

Kohli, a two-time ICC Player of the Year and ODI player of the year four times, at one stage, had a batting average of over 50 in all three formats, and although he underwent a three-year dry spell, he broke his idol Tendulkar's record of 49 ODI centuries. Kohli became the first man to do so at the World Cup 2023, where he also surpassed Tendulkar's record tally of 673 runs by amassing 765 himself. Kohli has excelled in all three formats, as well as the IPL, where he piled 973 runs in 2016 for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, which still continues to be a record. With over 7000 runs, Kohli is the leading run-scorer in the history of the Indian Premier League, and still continue to burn up the charts, as evident during IPL 2024.

At the start of his career, Kohli was tried at various positions in the batting line-up establishing himself at No. 3 in ODIs and T20Is. After just 25 ODI innings, he had already amassed 9 fifty-plus scores including two centuries. Kohli has always believed in backing his confidence and with the assurance evident in his shot selection and footwork, he was rarely found wanting with his technique even on bowling-friendly surfaces abroad. Once Kohli grew in maturity, especially in the ODIs, lean patches made way for eye-ball grabbing consistency.

Three years after his India debut, Kohli played his first Test against West Indies but it was his maiden century against Australia in Adelaide that proved he was here to stay. Kohli went to England in 2014 with the reputation of being India's best batter but was given a reality check as he could only muster 134 runs from 10 innings. However, Kohli roared back to form when he toured Australia, making his Test captaincy debut in the series opener. He tallied almost 700 runs in the 2014-15 Border-Gavaskar Trophy and stood tall as the rest of the Indian batters struggled.

The rest, as they say, is history. Once he took over from MS Dhoni as India's full-time captain, he took Indian cricket to greater heights. He emerged as India's most successful Test captain, leading the team to 40 wins and ensuring Team India finished as the top-ranked Test side – winning the ICC Test mace – for five straight years in a row. He stepped down as India's T20I captain after the 2021 T20 World Cup, was removed as ODI skipper and gave up Test captaincy in January of 2022. Kohli went through a lean patch, going three years without an international century, but as is the case with all great players, Virat was back in style, notching up hundreds for fun and raising the bar even higher.