Virat Kohli

India has given to the world many a great cricketer but none as ambitious as Virat Kohli. To meet his ambition, Kohli employed the technical assiduousness of Sachin Tendulkar and fitness that was in the league of top athletes in the world, not just cricketers. As a result, Kohli became the most consistent all-format accumulator of his time, making jaw-dropping chases look easy, and finding, in his own words, the safest possible way to score runs. Plenty of them.

This ambition transferred seamlessly to his captaincy: he demanded more than ever before of his bowlers, especially the quick ones, often sacrificed a batter for bowling depth, and led India to a long stay at No. 1 in the Test rankings and a first-ever Test series win in Australia. India won 40 out of the 68 Tests in which Kohli led, making him the fourth-most successful captain in the world, behind Graeme Smith, Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh.

Kohli scored Test hundreds in and against every country he played, other than in Bangladesh. He smashed records for number of matches taken to reach eight, nine, ten and eleven thousand ODI runs, and became the first batter to score 50 hundreds in ODIs - getting to the milestone in the 2023 World Cup semi-final, in the presence of Tendulkar, the man whose record he broke.