What makes Kohli so polarising?
How does the media cover Kohli, and why has that made him such a contentious figure?
Virat Kohli may be the most polarising cricketer ever.
He’s the best batter of his generation, but actually Rohit is better. He’s an honorary Bangalorean, but actually RCB would be better without him. He’s scored the most ODI centuries ever, but actually he should’ve scored more.
Kohli’s problem is that he is simultaneously an openly emotional human, AND a generational player whose ability demands attention. Throw in an A-list marriage, a knack for perfectly timed big games, & over 500 million Indians coming online during his career1, and you have the ideal conditions for a decade-long media storm.
It’s easy to blame social media for the polarising takes on Virat Kohli, but these debates start in the news media. Kohli is easy clickbait fodder, and was treated as such long before India’s Internet explosion.
I used Google Trends to determine when Kohli attracted the most attention relative to his fame at the time, and then I went through the top 20 articles on Google News from each spike. In all, I analysed 320 articles by 41 outlets over 13 years to answer a simple question; how has the media talked about Kohli throughout his career?
Jump to a section:
PHASE 1 - Sachin’s Heir Apparent (2011-2014)
PHASE 2 - Dhoni’s Potential Successor (2014-2017)
PHASE 3 - Anushka’s New Husband (2018-present)
PHASE 4 - The Kohli Comeback (2022-2024)
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PHASE 1 - Sachin’s Heir Apparent (2011-2014)
“[Sachin Tendulkar] has carried the burden of the nation for 21 years, it was time we carried him.”
Kohli’s quote became popular because it was honest and endearing. It was a kid who had spent his entire life watching Tendulkar save India’s skins, and got an unexpected chance to help the Little Master reach the promised land.
He was already seen as a wunderkind, but that quote launched him into the public consciousness. It didn’t hurt that he had actually played an important innings in the final after Tendulkar got out early.
As an ESPNcricinfo analysis put it, “Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir's 83-run partnership consumed only 15.3 overs and resurrected India's innings.”
Kohli’s performance and quote were perfect. They praised and helped Tendulkar without overshadowing him. Tendulkar was India’s God, and Kohli was India’s priest.
But, within a matter of months he was being tapped up to join the holy pantheon.
On March 16, 2012, Sachin Tendulkar scored 114 against Bangladesh in the Asia Cup, bringing up his iconic hundredth century after months of getting out in the 90s. At a celebration to commemorate his achievement, Tendulkar humbly predicted that either Kohli or Rohit Sharma would soon break that record.
On March 18, 2012, Virat Kohli scored a career-defining 183 against Pakistan. It remains his highest ODI score. Like I said, the guy just has a ridiculous knack of timing his best performances for the biggest moments.
There was no stopping the comparisons from that point onwards, and Kohli lived up to expectations. In November 2013, he made headlines by becoming the equal fastest player to 5,000 ODI runs, being ranked the No.1 batter in the world for the first time, and getting nominated for the ICC’s short-lived People’s Choice Award for the year.
In April 2014, Kohli took it a step forward and dragged India to the 2014 T20 World Cup final. They lost, but Kohli was named Player of the Tournament. A monumental series performance that finishes just short of an actual trophy? You couldn’t get more on the nose with the Tendulkar comparisons.
Of the 100 articles I analysed during this period of Kohli’s career, a whopping 70% were overwhelmingly positive about India’s new golden boy.
The only blot on his burgeoning media reputation came during April 2013 when a frustrated Kohli, newly installed as RCB’s captain, launched into tirades against his players for their abject performances, and (more damningly) attacked the Wankhede fans for booing him.
The perception of Kohli as an emotional and unsuitable leader was only about to get worse.
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PHASE 2 - Dhoni’s Potential Successor (2014-2017)
Kohli had first been appointed vice-captain during that eventful 2012 Asia Cup, and he soon got a chance to lead the team when he was made temporary skipper for a tour to Australia in November 2014.
The series went well, but Kohli was no longer being compared to a fading star; he was now matched up against the immaculate, cool-headed leadership of the all-winning MS Dhoni - and that was never going to be a favourable comparison.
Part of the reason why Kohli was perceived as poor leadership material was because he continued to act like an aggressive and brash young man well into his mid-20s. In particular, an outburst against a journalist during the 2015 ODI World Cup harmed his reputation badly.
In the middle of a press conference, Kohli started berating a journalist he thought had run a devious piece on his relationship with Anushka Sharma (more on her in a bit). The important word there is thought. Kohli apparently shouted at the wrong man, and was so vociferous in his language that he was reprimanded by both the BCCI and ICC.
In addition, his performances during that World Cup were sub-par by the standards he had set. Dhoni had to use a number of different press conferences defending his star batter throughout the tournament in March 2015. It’s not a good look if the man you’re being groomed to replace is spending all his time having to talk you up.
However, you can’t keep a player like Kohli down for too long. Within a year he had won the adulations of the media again after stellar performances during both the 2016 T20 World Cup and the 2016 IPL. He was officially the best batter in the world, and was beloved by all.
However, despite all this, you can tell that Kohli was starting to lose his sheen with the press. Of the 100 articles I analysed during this period, only 55 were positive. That may sound like a lot, but you have to remember that this was Kohli’s apex as a player, and there were 15% fewer positive articles about him than when he was still coming up the ranks between 2011-2014.
By December 2017, Kohli was in the headlines again because he scored a ridiculous 2,818 runs in the calendar year (the third most of anyone ever), recorded his 6th Test double century (matching an Indian record set by Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag), and…he got married.
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PHASE 3 - Anushka’s New Husband (2017-present)
Kohli’s marriage to Bollywood superstar Anushka Sharma brought about an interesting change in his popularity among the masses. If you look at the Google Trends chart again, you’ll notice something interesting.
He didn’t see a single outstanding peak in popularity between his marriage and the post-Covid return of the IPL. Kohli only scored 11 centuries between 2018 and 2022 (including a well publicised three-year drought), and was no longer Team India’s biggest talking point.
However, his general popularity hadn’t waned - it had just become different. You can tell by who was publishing the most popular stories about Kohli. Vogue was interested in the celebrities at the couple’s wedding, and Architectural Digest wrote about their reception in Mumbai.
Stories about his loving marriage to Sharma, his treatment of his kids, and even this oddly popular Indian Express piece about why Kohli prefers Olive Oil on his salads demonstrates something interesting; Kohli had transcended cricket to become a general pop culture icon.
This was reflected in the stories I looked at too. Quite neatly, I ended up analysing the same number of stories on his life with and without Sharma (160 articles each), and so the results are quite useful.
There were three times as many non-cricketing stories, and more than twice as many “neutral” stories2, about Kohli during his time with Sharma. Like that Olive Oil article I mentioned earlier, people wrote about him purely because his name in a headline garnered millions of clicks.
This general popularity is reflected in his social media follower growth as well. In April 2016, before the Jio Revolution, Kohli had 2 million Instagram followers while fellow young star Rohit Sharma had around 700,000 followers. Today, Rohit Sharma has 41M followers while Virat Kohli has a ridiculous 270M followers. Anushka Sharma has 68M followers, more than any cricketer she’s not married to.
Kohli had built himself a fanbase across both Bollywood and cricket.
However, as it is for any ageing athlete, Kohli’s career seemed to be winding down. He retired as captain of both RCB and India without much fanfare (or success), and his batting numbers started to dwindle across formats. Kohli had not won an ICC trophy or an IPL since 2013, and it was looking like he would never win another major team accolade.
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PHASE 4 - The Kohli Comeback (2022-2024)
We don’t need to write this section like it’s a surprise to anyone. You’re reading this article, so you already follow cricket. You know that Kohli has been experiencing a late career renaissance that rivals his output in 2016-17.
That snatched-from-the-jaws-of-defeat innings against Pakistan at the 2022 T20 World Cup, matching & surpassing Tendulkar’s ODI centuries record during the 2023 World Cup, the season-long domination of the 2024 IPL, and a match-of-the-match, World Cup-winning performance in his last ever T20 international.
Kohli’s been in the headlines for all the right reasons, and my analysis of the 80 stories during this year-and-a-half timeline showed just 6 negative stories. This is the adulation he should have been getting at his mid-2010s apex, but maybe we’re finally learning to appreciate Kohli’s greatness before it’s too late.
He’s not a multi-decade performer like Sachin, and he’s not an ice cool captain like Dhoni or Rohit. But none of them, nor anyone else in cricket, can say that they lived up to the scrutiny that Kohli has had to face over the last decade.
Let’s go back to the Google Trends data to get a glimpse of just how much more popular Kohli is than Dhoni & Rohit, the other two biggest Indian stars in the Internet age.
Apart from single month spikes in 2016, 2019 & 2020, Kohli has been the most searched about of the three for over a decade. In 2023, when CSK won the title, people were speculating about Dhoni’s retirement, and RCB were horrible, Kohli was still the most searched cricketer of the three!
The divide between Kohli’s and Dhoni’s/Sharma’s popularity only grows when you start looking at searches across the globe.
Kohli is the most looked up of the three players in 178 of the 195 regions that are tracked in this graph. Dhoni wasn’t even Googled in 17 nations, while Rohit Sharma wasn’t looked up at all in 38 countries.
Kohli has been subject to a global scrutiny and expectation that not many have faced in the Internet age.
Very few athletes have crossed over from sports to mainstream culture in the last decade, thereby guaranteeing millions of clicks with just a mention of their names. It’s no surprise that they contain a who’s who of the most polarising sporting figures; Lebron James, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Novak Djokovic.
That also happens to be a list of the best players in their respective sports over the last 15 years.
Going through the last batch of articles on his career, it feels like Kohli’s response to the media has changed. He’s still combative and emotional; he spent most of the 2024 IPL openly ridiculing anyone who questioned his place in the Indian national team.
But, it feels like a more secure response. It doesn’t feel like a child fighting the ghosts of players past. It feels like an adult who is comfortable with the value he brings to the people and players around him. And, it sounds like he’s got something to look forward to after cricket.
He recently said, “I think as sportsmen, we do have an end-date to our careers…Once I am done, I will be gone, you won't see me for a while.”
Who are we going to use for clickbait then?
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On the off chance that you’re not familiar with Indian telecom history, a company called Reliance Jio (owned by Mukesh Ambani, whose wife runs the Mumbai Indians) launched a dirt cheap Internet Service Provider in the mid-2010s. The innovation, which I like to call the Jio Revolution, has brought the Internet to 500 million (and counting) new Indians for the first time.
Sports writing is generally a game of opinions. Think back - when was the last time you read a story about Kohli that didn’t involve the writer either praising or criticising him in any way? And yet, somehow nearly 40% of the articles I looked at when he was with Sharma were just “neutral.”
This is probably my favourite thing you’ve ever written. & as someone who has devoted a good number of hours of her life to reading pretty much everything with the name Kohli on it (lol), this is right up there. Thanks for writing!