Dinesh Karthik Hails Virat Kohli as the Greatest T20 Player in Cricket History

Of all the big names he mentioned, Karthik hailed Kohli as the best ever India had produced. Karthik in many ways is one of the better individuals to judge Kohli the T20 batter. Both players played a lot of short version cricket for India together.

They also shared the RCB dressing room as teammates for five years. Karthik is currently Kohli’s batting coach at RCB and thus is one of the best to know what is going on in the Delhi-based batter’s mind when he plays this format.

Famously, Karthik was also part of the playing XI when Virat Kohli played one of his finest T20I knocks against Pakistan when he chased 28 runs off just 8 balls at the 2022 T20I World Cup. In the era of smashing every ball out of the park, Kohli, in his own soothing style, has stolen the imagination of many in this format.

A look at Virat Kohli the T20 batter

Dinesh Karthik’s statements about Virat Kohli weren’t just statements out of the blue. If one dives deeper, there are sufficient unparalleled numbers to back the statements up. For India, Kohli has played 125 matches in the 20 overs format. He has scored a stupendous 4188 runs at an incredible average of 48.7.

His run aggregate matching with an average so solid made him one of the most reliable batters on the team. He scored these runs at an intimidating strike rate of 137.05, making sure the pressure was always on the bowlers. His only century for India was the famous 122 he got against Afghanistan to end his three-year century drought at the highest level.

In IPL cricket, Kohli has played a total of 267 matches, and all of them for one franchise, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Kohli has scored an unmatched 8661 runs over the years at an average of 39.55 and a fearsome strike rate of 132.86. Over the course of 18 years in the IPL, Kohli has shown remarkable consistency and has single handedly won his side many games. Kohli has also won the Orange Cap award twice so far.

The first of those was in 2016 when he had a season out of pure fiction as he scored a mammoth 973 runs including four hundreds. Nine years down the likes, Kohli is batting with the same consistency as he amassed a total of 657 runs at an average of 54.75 in the recently concluded IPL 2025.

The last 14 months have been incredible for the batter in T20 cricket. He first won the World Cup with India and then, 10 months down the line, lifted his first ever IPL trophy. It took him 18 years, but the RCB great made sure he completed his dream with the franchise that picked him all those years ago.