Virat Kohli: The Complete Biography of a Modern Cricket Legend

Virat Kohli Biography: From Delhi Prodigy to Global Cricket Icon

Virat Kohli, born on November 5, 1988, in Delhi, India, is widely regarded as one of the most complete batters the game of cricket has ever produced. Over a career spanning nearly two decades, he transformed Indian cricket from a batting lineup dependent on a few superstars into a relentless, fitness-driven, fighting unit that refused to yield in any corner of the world.

Early Life and Background

Kohli was raised in Uttam Nagar, a middle-class neighbourhood in West Delhi, in a Punjabi family. His father, Prem Kohli, was a criminal lawyer, and his mother, Saroj Kohli, managed the household. He has an elder brother, Vikas, and an elder sister, Bhawna, and by all accounts grew up in a warm, tightly-knit home where discipline and respect for elders were not optional. From the time he was three years old, Kohli would pick up a bat and insist that his father bowl to him in their neighbourhood lane, a ritual that those close to the family describe as the earliest sign of what was to come.

In 1998, when the West Delhi Cricket Academy was established, Kohli’s father acted on the advice of neighbours who had grown convinced that gully cricket was no longer enough for his son. He arranged for Kohli to meet coach Rajkumar Sharma, a meeting that would define the cricketer’s early formation. The two struck an immediate bond, and Sharma has since credited the young Kohli’s work ethic as something he had never encountered before in a child of that age. The academy became Kohli’s second home through his formative years, and even then, his intensity on the field set him apart from boys who played the game for fun rather than for something larger.

The most defining personal moment of Kohli’s early life came on December 18, 2006, when his father passed away following a stroke. Kohli was just eighteen. That very evening, despite having been at his father’s bedside through the night, he went out and batted for Delhi in a Ranji Trophy match against Karnataka, scoring 90 runs before returning home for the funeral. It was a moment that told the cricket world everything it needed to know about the character of the man they were watching. Kohli has spoken publicly about this loss as the singular event that hardened his resolve and deepened his hunger to succeed.​

Education

Kohli received his early schooling at Vishal Bharti Public School in West Delhi. He later moved to Saviour Convent Senior Secondary School, though cricket steadily consumed more and more of his academic time as he progressed through the age-group circuit. By the time he was in his mid-teens, the balance had decisively tipped in favour of cricket. He completed his schooling through Class 12 but did not pursue higher education, a choice that required no justification given the trajectory his career was already on. His real classroom became the cricket academy and the domestic cricket circuit, where the education he received in temperament, pressure management, and technical refinement proved far more consequential than any formal degree could have been.

Career Beginnings

Kohli made his domestic debut in October 2002, representing Delhi in the Under-15 circuit against Himachal Pradesh at the Luhnu Cricket Ground. In the 2003–04 Vijay Merchant Trophy, he emerged as the highest run-scorer for the Delhi Under-17 team, a performance that announced his arrival on the age-group stage. He moved through the ranks steadily, and his ability to score consistently rather than simply show flashes of brilliance marked him as a player with professional intent from an unusually early age. He scored his first domestic half-century at the Feroze Shah Kotla against Haryana, finishing that early season with 172 runs at an average of 34.40 and heading his team’s run charts.

He broke into the Delhi senior team in the Ranji Trophy and quickly proved that the step up in standard only sharpened his focus. His ODI debut for India came in August 2008 against Sri Lanka in Dambulla, but it was the event earlier that year that truly launched him onto the national consciousness. Kohli captained the Indian Under-19 team to victory at the 2008 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup in Kuala Lumpur, leading with the kind of aggressive, results-first intensity that would become his hallmark across every format and every stage of cricket that followed.​

Rise to Fame

The turning point in Kohli’s international journey arrived not through a single innings but through a series of performances during India’s tour of the West Indies in 2011, shortly after he had been part of India’s ODI World Cup-winning squad that year. He scored back-to-back hundreds in difficult conditions, signaling that he was not merely a promising youngster but a cricketer already operating at the highest level. However, it was his role in India’s chase of 321 against Pakistan in the 2012 Asia Cup, where he scored an unbeaten 183, that elevated him to superstar status in the popular imagination. The innings was technically brilliant, emotionally charged, and delivered against the sport’s most high-voltage opponent. Indian cricket had found its next great batter.​

His domestic franchise career added another dimension to his fame. Joining Royal Challengers Bengaluru for the inaugural IPL season in 2008 as a teenager, Kohli grew with the franchise across every subsequent year, becoming not just its best player but its identity. In the 2016 IPL season, he produced what many analysts consider the finest individual batting season in T20 history, scoring 973 runs in a single tournament — a record that stood for years and defined the upper ceiling of what was thought possible in franchise cricket.

Career Peak and Major Achievements

Virat Kohli and RCB team celebrating IPL trophy win 

The period between 2014 and 2019 represents the unambiguous peak of Kohli’s career, during which he was not just the best batter in India but the best batter in the world across all three formats simultaneously — a distinction that almost no cricketer in the modern era has been able to sustain. In Test cricket, he assembled centuries on pitches across England, Australia, South Africa, and the Caribbean, dismantling the idea that Indian batters could only dominate on subcontinental surfaces. His 149 at Adelaide in 2014 during India’s tour of Australia is considered one of the finest Test innings ever played on Australian soil and announced to the global cricketing community that Indian batting had entered a new era.

As Test captain, Kohli transformed the team’s culture radically. He mandated high fitness standards, eliminated the draw-for-safety mentality that had defined Indian away tours, and introduced a pace-forward bowling philosophy that produced some of India’s greatest fast bowlers — Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and Ishant Sharma all flourished under his captaincy. India won their first-ever Test series in Australia under his leadership in 2018–19, a result that is remembered as one of the crowning achievements of Indian cricket history. He finished his Test career with 9,230 runs across 123 matches at an average of 46.85, including 30 centuries and 31 half-centuries.

In ODI cricket, his numbers are simply without precedent. He crossed 14,000 ODI runs faster than any batter in history, climbed to second place on the all-time ODI run charts with over 14,500 runs, and registered 53 ODI centuries — more than any player in the history of the format. His record of 43 Man of the Match awards in ODIs alone reflects an ability to consistently deliver in matches that matter. He was named Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World three consecutive years from 2016 to 2018, and the ICC awarded him multiple Player of the Year honours across formats. Domestically, he won the Orange Cap in the IPL twice, in 2016 and 2024, and remained RCB’s all-time leading run-scorer with over 8,000 runs in the tournament.

In 2025, Kohli achieved something that had eluded him for eighteen seasons — an IPL title. Royal Challengers Bengaluru won their maiden IPL championship, beating Punjab Kings by six runs in a tense final in Ahmedabad. Kohli top-scored with 43 runs and finished the tournament as RCB’s leading run-getter with 657 runs in 15 matches. When the final ball was bowled, he was visibly overcome with emotion, describing the win as one of the most significant moments of his career. “I’ve given this team my youth, my prime, and my experience,” he said after the win, in words that captured eighteen years of loyalty and longing in a single breath.​

Personal Life

Kohli married Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma on December 11, 2017, in an intimate ceremony in Florence, Italy, after the two met during a commercial shoot in 2013 and dated for nearly five years. Their relationship attracted enormous media attention from the beginning — two of India’s most celebrated public figures in their respective fields — but both of them consistently pushed back against intrusions into their private life, drawing clear lines between their professional personas and their roles as partners and parents. Anushka has been widely credited by Kohli as the anchor of his personal life, and his public statements about her routinely reflect a depth of feeling that goes well beyond celebrity gesture.​

They became parents for the first time when their daughter Vamika was born in January 2021. Their son, Akaay, was born in London on February 15, 2024, and Kohli missed an entire Test series against England to be present for the birth — a decision that drew both admiration and debate but which he stood behind without hesitation. Both children have been kept away from the public eye as deliberately as possible, with the couple requesting that the media and fans respect their privacy. Off the field, Kohli is known for his commitment to fitness — he follows a plant-based diet, trains daily, and has spoken at length about how a transformation in his dietary habits in his late twenties dramatically improved his energy levels, recovery times, and mental clarity.

Controversies

Kohli’s career has not been without friction. His aggressive demeanour on the field — stare-downs with opposition players, audible send-offs, and an intensity that can tip into confrontation — has drawn criticism from former cricketers and cricket boards on multiple occasions. The most sustained controversy of his captaincy era involved his relationship with former coach Anil Kumble, who resigned in 2017 after a public falling-out with Kohli. The BCCI’s decision to support Kohli over Kumble created a significant internal dispute that raised questions about player power in Indian cricket and the balance of authority between coaches and captains. Kohli addressed the matter sparingly in public, maintaining that the relationship had simply become untenable without assigning specific blame. His decision to step down as T20I captain in 2021, followed by his removal from the ODI captaincy by the BCCI, sparked months of intense media scrutiny and speculation about dressing room tensions and board dynamics — a chapter that remained unresolved in public discourse until time and subsequent performances shifted the narrative.​

Philanthropy and Social Work

Kohli established the Virat Kohli Foundation in 2013 with an explicit focus on supporting underprivileged children across India. The foundation has worked with organisations including the Smile Foundation to support youth education, and partnered with the ABIL Foundation to aid senior citizens in old-age homes. Among its most visible annual events are the Celebrity Clasico football matches, which bring together Indian cricketers and Bollywood personalities to raise charitable funds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kohli initiated a relief campaign with a personal donation of Rs 2 crore, and the campaign ultimately raised over Rs 11 crore for relief efforts across the country. The foundation subsequently collaborated with the Awaaz Foundation to establish a rehabilitation centre for stray animals in Mumbai, an initiative Kohli has said was inspired by Anushka Sharma’s deep commitment to animal welfare. Beyond the foundation’s structured work, he has been vocal on issues ranging from mental health to body image standards for young athletes, using his social media presence — one of the largest of any sportsperson globally — as a platform for advocacy rather than purely promotion.

Awards and Recognition

The breadth of Kohli’s honours spans national awards, international cricket accolades, and franchise cricket records. He received the Arjuna Award in 2013, the Padma Shri in 2017, and the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna — India’s highest sporting honour — in 2018. From the ICC, he has been named to the ODI Team of the Year in 2012, 2014, and continuously from 2016 to 2019, and has received the ICC Test Player of the Year award in 2018. He won the ICC Spirit of Cricket award in 2019, the ICC ODI Cricketer of the Year in 2023, and the Player of the Tournament at the 2023 Cricket World Cup — a tournament in which India were ultimately beaten in the final but where Kohli’s personal performances were extraordinary. Wisden named him Leading Cricketer in the World for three straight years from 2016 to 2018, and he was Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2019. His 69 Man of the Match awards across all international formats — 10 in Tests, 43 in ODIs, and 16 in T20Is — stand as one of the most telling measures of his consistency in match-defining moments. He also won the ICC Champions Trophy twice, in 2013 and 2025, the latter of which he lifted as the oldest centurion in Champions Trophy history at 36 years and 110 days.

Retirement and Current Status

Kohli had already retired from T20 internationals in July 2024, immediately after India won the T20 World Cup — a fitting exit from the shortest format on cricket’s biggest stage. He then announced his retirement from Test cricket on May 12, 2025, in a statement shared on his Instagram account, describing the decision as one that “feels right” after fourteen years of Test cricket. His final Test appearance came during the New Year’s Test against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 2025, with his career in the format ending on 9,230 runs at an average of 46.85. He continues to play ODI cricket and remains fully active in the IPL, where his dedication to Royal Challengers Bengaluru has already produced the franchise’s first and only title. At 37, Kohli’s competitive fire shows no sign of dimming — his performances in the 2025 Champions Trophy and the IPL that same year demonstrated that he remains not merely a participant but the standard against which younger batters continue to measure themselves.

Legacy and Influence

The legacy Kohli leaves on Indian cricket is structural as much as statistical. He did not merely score runs — he changed the culture of how Indian cricketers prepared, competed, and held themselves accountable on the field. The fitness revolution in Indian cricket, now so thoroughly embedded that it defines the team’s identity, is traced directly to the standards Kohli set and demanded from the mid-2010s onwards. His record of 53 ODI centuries — a number that may never be surpassed — is the single most cited statistic of his career, but it tells only part of the story. What those numbers represent is an era in which an Indian batter went to every part of the cricket-playing world and produced match-winning performances in conditions that had historically diminished subcontinental batters.

His influence reaches well beyond the statistics. An entire generation of Indian cricketers — from Shubman Gill to Yashasvi Jaiswal — has grown up watching Kohli and internalizing not just his technique but his appetite for confrontation, his refusal to absorb pressure passively, and his treatment of every innings as an opportunity to impose rather than survive. In the broadest cultural sense, Kohli reshaped what it meant to be a professional Indian cricketer, turning the archetype from a technically gifted but temperamentally cautious figure into something far more combative, far more physically demanding, and far more globally competitive. That transformation will outlast every record he has set and every trophy he has won.

Test Cricket Records and Milestones

Virat Kohli retired from Test cricket on May 12, 2025, closing a fourteen-year chapter that ended with 9,230 runs from 123 matches at an average of 46.85, including 30 centuries and 31 half-centuries. His highest Test score of 254 not out came against South Africa in Pune in 2019, which also stands as the highest score by an Indian captain in Test history. He is the only Indian batsman to have scored seven double-centuries in Tests — a record that no other player from the subcontinent has come close to matching. In 2016 alone, he became the first Indian to score three double-centuries in a calendar year, a feat that underlined how completely he had conquered the five-day format at his peak.​

As a Test captain, Kohli’s record stands separate from his batting numbers and is equally formidable. He led India in 68 Tests and won 40 of them, the highest number of Test victories by any Indian skipper. Under his captaincy, India reached the number one ICC Test ranking and held it for five consecutive years from 2016 to 2021, a period during which the team dismantled opponents home and away with a combination of attacking batting and a pace-bowling attack he built from the ground up. The 2018–19 series win in Australia — India’s first-ever Test series victory on Australian soil — remains the crowning achievement of his captaincy, a result that rewrote what Indian cricket was believed capable of achieving abroad.​

His performance during the final stretch of his Test career was uneven by his own standards, which made his retirement easier to absorb intellectually even if it stung emotionally. The five-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against Australia in 2024–25 produced just 190 runs across nine innings at an average of 23.75, though he had opened that same series with a brilliant unbeaten 100 in Perth — a hundred that briefly suggested a return to his imperious best. His last Test appearance came at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 2025, and when the announcement of retirement arrived in May, the global cricketing community was not surprised, only saddened.

ODI Records: Numbers Without Precedent

Kohli’s ODI career is the most statistically dominant individual batting body of work in the history of the format. He finished with 54 ODI centuries — surpassing Sachin Tendulkar’s seemingly unreachable record of 49 — across 311 matches. His career ODI batting average of 58.02 is the third-highest in history among players with 5,000-plus runs, and his tally of over 14,390 runs places him second only to Tendulkar on the all-time ODI run-scoring charts. What makes the average even more remarkable is the context in which he produced it — he averaged 64.50 in ODI run chases, and when India won a match in which he scored a century, that average climbed to an almost incomprehensible 89.50.

He holds the record for being the fastest batter to reach every major run milestone in ODI cricket from 8,000 runs all the way through to 14,000 runs. Against Pakistan in the 2025 Champions Trophy, he scored an unbeaten 100 from 111 balls to become the fastest player in history to reach 14,000 ODI runs, simultaneously breaking the Indian fielding record with his 158th ODI catch. He has scored the most ODI centuries against a single opponent — 10 against Sri Lanka — and won more Man of the Match awards in ODIs than any other player, with 43 in that format alone as part of a total of 69 across all international formats.

The 2023 ODI World Cup represents perhaps the most vivid late-career exhibition of his ODI dominance. Playing on home soil in India, he scored 765 runs across the tournament at an average of 95.63, which included three centuries and a consistency that bordered on the mechanical. He scored a century in the semi-final against New Zealand and was named Player of the Tournament even as India fell at the final hurdle against Australia. Those numbers confirmed that even at 34, approaching the end of his peak, Kohli in an ODI World Cup was a category unto himself.​

IPL Career: RCB’s Heartbeat

Kohli has played every single IPL season with Royal Challengers Bengaluru since the tournament’s inception in 2008 — a loyalty spanning eighteen years and one that, for most of that journey, came without the reward of a title. He is the all-time highest run-scorer in IPL history with 8,661 runs from 267 matches at an average of 39.55 and a strike rate of 132.86. He has hit 8 IPL centuries — more than any other batter in the history of the league — and 63 half-centuries, making him statistically the most prolific franchise cricketer the IPL has ever produced. His highest IPL score of 113 came against Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2024.

The single most extraordinary individual season in IPL history belongs to Kohli. In 2016, he scored 973 runs in a single tournament — a record that still stands a decade later — finishing with a strike rate well above 150 and dragging RCB to the final almost single-handedly before they fell to Sunrisers Hyderabad. That season contained four centuries, and the debate about whether any individual batting season in franchise T20 cricket will ever surpass it remains firmly open.

The wait for a title ended in June 2025, when RCB defeated Punjab Kings by six runs in a tense final at Ahmedabad. Kohli scored 43 runs in the final and finished the 2025 tournament with 657 runs from 15 matches at an average of 54.75 and a strike rate of 144.71 — his best returns since 2024. He was also retained by RCB ahead of the IPL 2026 mega auction at a retainer price of Rs. 21 crore, confirming that at 37, the franchise continues to build its identity around him.

Anushka Sharma: The Relationship

Kohli and Anushka Sharma first met in 2013 on the set of a shampoo commercial, and both have said in separate interviews that the connection was immediate even if the relationship took time to develop formally. They began making public appearances together in 2014, when Kohli famously drove straight to Anushka’s Mumbai home from the airport after returning from India’s South Africa tour — a detail that was picked up by the media and became one of those small human moments that defined how the public understood their relationship. Both were high-profile figures in their respective worlds, and the intensity of media attention they attracted was considerable. When India lost the 2015 World Cup semi-final to Australia, a section of the media irresponsibly attributed the loss to Anushka’s presence in the stands — Kohli pushed back forcefully on social media, turning a moment of unfair targeting into one of the most widely praised public defences of a partner by a sportsperson in Indian history.

They married on December 11, 2017, in an intimate ceremony at Borgo Finocchieto, a medieval villa in Tuscany, Italy, attended only by close family and friends. The secrecy was absolute — the couple used pseudonyms during the planning process, and Anushka later told Vogue India that the only priority was making it about the two of them. Receptions followed in Delhi and Mumbai for the broader circle. Their daughter Vamika was born on January 11, 2021, and their son Akaay — a name meaning “light of the shining moon” reflecting their spiritual sensibilities — arrived on February 15, 2024, in London. Both births were announced on Instagram with requests for privacy, and the couple has remained unwavering in keeping their children away from public exposure. Anushka has publicly described Kohli as a deeply hands-on father, and Kohli’s decision to miss a Test series in England to be present for Akaay’s birth drew wide attention as a statement of personal priorities from a man whose entire professional identity had been built around an absolute commitment to cricket.​

Recent Form: 2024–2026

Kohli’s form through the 2024 and 2025 calendar years was defined by two distinct registers — towering performances in ODIs and the IPL alongside a difficult final stretch in Test cricket. The 2024 IPL was his best since his legendary 2016 season, producing 741 runs from 15 matches at an average of 61.75 and a strike rate of 154.70, including the Orange Cap and a top score of 113 against Rajasthan Royals. That performance re-established his T20 credentials emphatically at a time when some had questioned whether his peak franchise-cricket days were behind him.​

In contrast, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024–25 against Australia was a chastening experience. After a sensational unbeaten century in Perth in the opening Test, he managed just 190 runs across his remaining eight innings as the series progressed, finishing with a series average of 23.75. His struggles outside off stump — a technical vulnerability that had surfaced periodically since 2014 — resurfaced and were exploited by Australia’s pace attack with a consistency that was difficult to ignore. The 2025 Champions Trophy, however, immediately restored perspective. He scored an unbeaten 100 against Pakistan, 84 against Australia, and contributed across the knockout stages as India lifted the trophy, confirming that in white-ball cricket at ICC events, Kohli’s ability to produce match-defining innings remained entirely intact into his late thirties. He retained his IPL place with RCB at Rs. 21 crore for 2026, and with white-ball cricket now his sole international focus, the expectation is that his ODI career will extend towards the 2027 ODI World Cup.

Business Ventures and Net Worth

Kohli’s off-field commercial empire is built across fashion, fitness, food, sports franchises, and technology, and his estimated net worth as of 2025 stands at approximately Rs. 1,050 crore (around $125 million). His fashion brand Wrogn, launched in 2014 under the Universal Sportsbiz umbrella, targets young men in the 18–30 age bracket and has grown into one of India’s most recognisable youth fashion labels. His lifestyle brand One8 has extended into multiple categories including apparel, footwear, and fragrance, and serves as the central brand identity through which most of his endorsement products are channelled.​

In fitness, Kohli invested approximately Rs. 90 crore in Chisel Fitness, a gym and fitness centre chain that has expanded to multiple cities across India. He and Anushka jointly invested Rs. 2.2 crore in Digit Insurance, reflecting a shared financial planning strategy. In 2019, he purchased a debenture of Rs. 33.42 lakh in Galactus Funware Technology, a Bengaluru-based mobile gaming startup, at a time when gaming was just beginning its explosive growth in India. He also co-owns FC Goa in the Indian Super League, UAE Royals in the International Premier Tennis League, and Bengaluru Yodhas in the Pro Wrestling League — investments that reflect his broader belief in building the infrastructure of Indian sport beyond cricket.

Beyond ownership stakes, Kohli commands between Rs. 7.60 crore and Rs. 10 crore per brand endorsement deal, placing him among the highest-paid celebrity endorsers in the country. His real estate portfolio includes a residential property in Mumbai valued at approximately Rs. 34 crore and a property in Gurugram valued at Rs. 80 crore, in addition to two plots in Alibaug purchased for a combined Rs. 20 crore. The architecture of his financial life reflects the same long-term thinking and disciplined diversification that characterised his approach to batting — nothing is left to chance, and every investment points toward relevance well beyond the playing career that made his name.