Kohli started his international career in 2008 in the ODI series against Sri Lanka. It was the first ODI of the tour when he got his chance but couldn?t do anything special as he scored just 12 runs off 33 balls and India lost that match by 8 wickets. Kohli made his mark in ODI cricket in the 4th ODI at Eden Gardens against Sri Lanka when India needed 316 to win the match. India didn?t have a good start losing Sachin and Sehwag at the score of 23. Kohli walked in at number 4 and Gambhir and Kohli took the match away from Sri Lanka. Nobody expected it from Kohli as he was just a youngster at that time. To perform in such a high pressure chase must have been a huge boost in confidence for him. The flicks, the pulls, the cover drives, everything was on display in that innings. Gambhir received the man of the match for his 150 but he offered his award to Kohli because his innings had a big impact on the result. From thereon, there was nothing that could stop him.
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Kohli?s talent in the shortest format can be seen from the fact that his average in T20s in 2016 is 106.83. Kohli has so many great innings in T20 cricket that it?s hard to pick one, be it the 82 against Australia in WC 2016, 90 against Australia in Australia or 49 against Pakistan when Aamir was bowling the spell of his life.
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Virat Kohli recently became the only Indian to score two double hundreds as the captain of India. He is now 4th in the list of batsman with most no. of centuries behind Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting and Sanath Jayasuria. Kohli, with 14 hundreds in successful chases in ODIs, has equalled Tendulkar?s record. His overall tally of 16 hundreds in chases is the second highest next only to Tendulkar?s 17. A lot of records have been broken by him and hopefully many will be broken in the future which proves that Virat Kohli is a legend in the making if not one already.