A 19-year old young lad from Delhi dawned the number 18 jersey for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the inaugural edition of the IPL as a budding cricketer. Fast forward to 2022 and the same boy is now regarded as the greatest batsman the franchise has witnessed in the 15 seasons of the toughest league in the world.
Kohli has scored 6624 runs in his IPL career in 223 matches and is the only player to have played for the same franchise since the maiden year of the tournament. However, his start wasn’t a great one in the first edition played in 2008. He managed to score only 165 runs in 12 innings at an average of 15.00 and a poor strike rate of 105.09. He showed some improvement in the next season where he scored 246 runs at an average of 22.36 but once again struggled with the strike rate. Come 2010, Kohli let his bat do the talking and smashed 307 runs at a strike rate of 144.81, and emerged as the RCB’s third highest-run getter that season.
He went sky high in the 2011 edition where his franchise made it to the final and scored 557 runs at an astonishing average of 46.41 including 4 half-centuries. He ended up as the second highest-run getter of the season that year. His 2012 run saw a slight dip as he scored 364 runs at an average of 28.
The 2013 season saw him roar once again where he was handed the RCB captaincy and Kohli scored his personal-best 634 runs that year with six scores of 50+ and was the third most-scoring batsman overall. In the 2014 IPL which was held in the U.A.E. alongside India, Kohli struck a total of 359 runs where he managed to score only 2 half-centuries. However, he came back to form in the 8th season and scored 505 runs in the season where his team made it to the playoffs and Kohli ended up as the fifth leading run scorer.
The 2016 season is regarded as the greatest time of Kohli’s IPLcareer where his form peaked to such an extent that he overcame an injury with stitches in his hand and scored a hundred. He scored a mammoth 973 runs in 16 matches at a mind-blowing average of 81.08 including 4 centuries in the season. With this, he surpassed the record of most runs scored by a batsman in a single edition of the IPL which was 733 runs. He won the Orange Cap as well as the Most valuable Player Award in the 9th edition and took his side to the final.
He missed the first 4 matches of the 2017 season due to an injury and had an off-run in the tournament, scoring 308 runs in the ten games. Celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the IPL, Kohli was named in the all-time Cricinfo IPL XI.
He was retained for the 2018 edition for a sum of $2.1 million or INR 17 Crores, the highest for any player that season. He scored 530 runs in the tournament and became the first batsman in history to score 500 runs in 5 different IPL seasons.
Kohli reached the feat of 5000 IPL runs after Suresh Raina on 28 March 2019 and even surpassed the ex-Chennai Super Kings player in the same season in terms of the highest-run scorer in the history of the IPL. He scored 464 runs with the help of 2 fifties and a hundred in the season, striking at 141.46.
In 2020, he struck 466 runs in 15 matches at an average of 42.36 with a strike rate of 121.35. He scored his 6000th IPL run against the Rajasthan Royals on 22 April 2021 and became the first player to do so. In the edition, Kohli struck a total of 405 runs with 3 fifties to his name. The latest season played in 2022 saw him achieve the 6500-runs mark in the IPL in the game against Punjab Kings. In the final league match of the season, Kohli reached the milestone of scoring 7000 runs for RCB. He ended up scoring 341 runs that year at an average of 21.31 and a strike rate of 115.
Virat Kohli only scored less than 300 runs in an IPL season on 2 occasions out of the 15 editions that he has played in. Those two were also the first and second season of the IPL in 2008 and 2009. He has been undoubtedly the most consistent performer in the IPL thus far. Here, we have a look at the huge accolades that the King has achieved in his IPL career.
| S.No | Record |
| 1 | Highest run scorer (6624) |
| 2 | Most runs in a season (973) |
| 3 | Most hundreds in a season (4) |
| 4 | Joint 2nd highest centuries (5) |
| 5 | Most matches as captain of the RCB |
| 6 | 3rd most fifties (44) |
| 7 | First batsman to score 6500 runs |
| 8 | Most runs against Delhi Capitals (925) |
| 9 | Most runs against Rising Pune Supergiant (271) |
| 10 | Most runs for RCB (6,624) |
| 11 | Highest score against Rising Pune Supergiant (108*) |
| 12 | Joint 2nd highest 50+ scores (49) |
| 13 | Fastest to 6000 runs (188 innings) |
| 14 | 2nd fastest to 5000 runs |
| 15 | First batsman to score 500 runs in 5 different seasons |
| 16 | 2nd most fours (578) |
| 17 | 6th most sixes (218) |
| 18 | 5th most runs in an over (30) |
| 19 | Only player to have played for the same franchise since the first season |
| 20 | Won the Orange Cap in 2016 (973 runs) |
| 21 | Won the Most-valuable Player Award in 2016 |
| 22 | 3rd joint highest IPL salary (INR 15 Crores) |
| 23 | Scored 7000 runs for the RCB |
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