Having played top-flight cricket for over 15 years, there’s almost nothing Virat Kohli hasn’t achieved. He is a World Cup winner, India’s most successful Test captain, won the ICC Player of the year award multiple times and the best all-format batter of the modern era. However, there is one achievement that continues to elude him, the reason why we mentioned the word ‘almost’ above. Despite a glittering career full of never-ending accolades, Kohli is yet to win the IPL trophy.
Kohli has been playing the Indian Premier League since the very beginning in 2008 for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, but despite putting in a string of individual brilliance, hasn’t been able to lay his hands on the gorgeous silverware. He’s come thrice – in 2009, 2011 and 2016 – when RCB reached the final, but on all three occasions, could not cross the final hurdle. While most of his contemporaries have won the IPL at least once, let alone Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah and MS Dhoni five times each – Kohli is yet to get off the mark despite this being his 17th attempt.
Weighing in on the same, former India coach and one of Kohli’s closest confidantes, Ravi Shastri described a parallel universe where Virat would have won the IPL several times by now. As mentioned above, Kohli’s performance has never been an issue; the problem lies with his franchise. Despite captaining for 9 seasons, Kohli couldn’t lead RCB to a title, and Shastri may have figured out just why that is. “Virat Kohli would have won the most number of trophies if IPL was an individual sport,” he said on Star Sports.
Shastri’s Truth Bomb
And that my friends, is one of the closest things to truth a Kohli fan would ever hear. Look at the year 2016, when Kohli burned up the charts, scoring 973 runs – which still is a record for the most runs scored in a single edition of the IPL. Or just last year, where Kohli, not having played a single T20I in three months, entered the IPL and smashed almost 650 runs. This year too, Kohli is leading the list of run-getters and holds the Orange Cap with over 200 runs including two half-centuries from four innings. After getting out for 21 against CSK, Kohli smacked back-to-back fifties – 77 and 83 not out – against Punjab Kings and KKR.
Kohli is the leading scorer in IPL history with 7466 runs and the fourth most capped cricketer behind MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik and Rohit Sharma. The fact that RCB lost to Kolkata Knight Riders and then again to Lucknow Super Giants on their home ground, failing to chase down 182 on one of India’s smallest cricket venues was evident on Kohli’s face even as coach Andy Flower tried to lift the spirits of the entire team. With the first set of home games done and dusted for RCB, Faf du Plessis and his team will now move to Jaipur to face the Rajasthan Royals and then head to the Wankhede Stadium to face the struggling Mumbai Indians on Sunday.
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