Virat Kohli ( pronunciation (help·info); born 5 November 1988) is an Indian international cricketer who currently captains the Indian cricket team. A right-handed batsman often regarded as one of the best batsmen in the world.[2] Kohli was ranked eighth in ESPN's list of world's most famous athletes in 2016.[3] He plays for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League (IPL), and has been the team's captain since 2013.
Born and raised in Delhi, Kohli represented the city's cricket team at various age-group levels before making his first-class debut in 2006. He captained India Under-19s to victory at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup in Malaysia, and a few months later, made his ODI debut for India against Sri Lanka at the age of 19. Initially having played as a reserve batsman in the Indian team, he soon established himself as a regular in the ODI middle-order and was part of the squad that won the 2011 World Cup. He made his Test debut in 2011, and shrugged off the tag of "ODI specialist" by 2013 with Test hundreds in Australia and South Africa.[4] Having reached the number one spot in the ICC rankings for ODI batsmen for the first time in 2013,[5] Kohli also found success in the Twenty20 format, winning the Man of the Tournament twice at the ICC World Twenty20 (in 2014 and 2016). In 2014, he became the top-ranked T20I batsman in the ICC rankings and holds the position, as of January 2017.[6]
Kohli was appointed vice-captain of the ODI team in 2012, and handed over the Test captaincy following Mahendra Singh Dhoni's Test retirement in 2014. In early-2017, he became the limited-overs captain as well after Dhoni stepped down from the position. Kohli holds numerous Indian batting records including the fastest ODI century, the fastest batsman to 5,000 ODI runs and the fastest to 10 ODI centuries. He is only the second batsman in the world to have scored 1,000 or more ODI runs for four consecutive calendar years.[7] On Jan 22, 2017, Kohi claimed another record under his belt to become fastest ODI captain to score 1,000 ODI runs in just 17 innings by surpassing South African master class batsman AB de Villiers.[8]
