T20 Icons: Virat Kohli

India have been blessed with generational batting talents over the years and Virat Kohli is the latest player to enjoy superstardom in the cricket-mad nation.

Following on from Sachin Tendulkar before him, Kohli is the talisman of the Indian national team and considered one of the greatest batsmen in history.

The fastest man to reach a slew of run-scoring milestones in ODI cricket, Kohli is the only man to have hit 50 centuries in the international 50-over game, and his insatiable appetite for runs has transferred to the Test arena and T20 cricket.

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Virat Kohli in Profile

Country	India
Years active	2006-present
Playing role	Top-order batsman
Career T20 runs	12,536

Virat Kohli honours

Virat Kohli's impact on world cricket cannot be understated.

He won his first international trophy at the Under-19 World Cup in 2008 and helped India win the men's version on home soil three years later. 

An ICC Champions Trophy success followed in 2013, the last global trophy won by India, but the individual accolades continued to flow for Kohli.

Kohli was named ICC ODI player of the year in 2012, 2017, 2018 and 2023 and he has featured among the global governing body's ODI Team of year seven times in that time-frame.

Kohli has twice been named the ICC's Cricketer of the Year and anointed Men's Cricketer of the Decade in 2020.

In Twenty20 cricket, the 35-year-old holds the record for most runs in T20 internationals and he is also the leading runscorer in the history of the Indian Premier League.

Virat Kohli greatest matches

It's hard to narrow down Virat Kohli's greatest performances - there have simply been so many - but the man himself hailed his match-winning unbeaten 82 from 53 balls against Pakistan in the 2022 T20 World Cup as his best knock.

While some of his team-mates struggled, Kohli was the personification of poise, calmness and ruthlessness all rolled into one as he completed a magnificent final-ball run-chase in front of over 90,000 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Kohli struggled on his first tour of England in 2014 as Jimmy Anderson had his number time and again during the five-match series.

But he returned to British shores four years later determined to show he was the best around, and compiled a masterful 149 in the first Test at Edgbaston and scored a series-leading 593 runs - some 244 more than the next on the list. Some way to silence your critics. 

Virat Kohli career statistics

A prolific runscorer in all formats, Virat Kohli's achievements in ODI cricket are considered his best.

Kohli has scored 13,848 runs in the 50-over international game at an average of 58.67 with a record 50 centuries.

He averages a touch under 50 in Test cricket but has still scored 8,848 runs and compiled 29 centuries and 30 fifties in the five-day arena.

Kohli has scored a record 4,037 runs in international T20 cricket at average of 41.75 and 12,536 in all 20-over matches with nine hundreds and 95 fifties.

With 7,805 runs for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Kohli is by some distance the most prolific batsman in the history of the Indian Premier League. He has scored a competition-leading eight centuries and also passed 50 on 54 occasions in that time.

Quotes on Virat Kohli 

Virat thrives in pressure situations. The more pressure on Virat, the better he plays. There aren't too many batsmen in world cricket today who love chasing and the burden of trying to overtake a big score.

Kohli's former international team-mate Harbhajan Singh.

By the time he ends his career, quite a few Australian grounds will have a stand named after him.

MS Dhoni on Kohli's exceptional performances down under.

To become a good player, you need talent. To become a great player, you need an attitude like Kohli

Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar

There are many really great players but he is the stand-out across all the three formats of this era by a country mile.

Michael Vaughan