Team India captain Virat Kohli shared his 1000th post on Instagram on Thursday. Kohli, who is very much active on social media, is also the most followed Indian on Instagram with 69.5 million followers.
Kohli shared an inspiring post and thanked his fans for their support. He captioned the image: "2008 2020. With many learnings along the way, I'm grateful for your love and support you guys have shown me. Here's to the #1000thPost."
In the photoshopped image, the young Kohli is seen fist-bumping the current version of himself, who is one of the greatest batsmen of this generation.
Kohli made his international cricket debut in 2008 against Sri Lanka in an ODI series. The Indian captain is currently ICC no.1 ranked batsman in ODIs and no.2 in Tests.
Recently, Gary Kirsten, who was the coach of India when Kohli made his debut, said he had great abilities and talent during his initial day but wasn't operating at his best.
“Our relationship was formulated around him as a young player coming in, and me trying to say to him that he has a long way to go and to build in some consistent behaviours into the way he played this game.
"When I met Virat first up, he had great abilities and talent and he was a young guy. But I kind of knew straight away that he wasn’t operating in the best version of himself. So we had a number of discussions,” Kirsten said on The RK show on Youtube.
Kirsten then talked about the match in the ODI series when Kohli played a rash shot after scoring 30-odd runs after which he advised him to play shots along the ground. Kohli returned with a century in the next match.
“I’ll never forget one when we were playing an ODI series against Sri Lanka, and he was batting beautifully and he was on 30-odd not out. He then decided that he would try and hit the (bowler) over long-on’s head for six. And he got holed out.
"I just said to him, ‘If you’re going to take your cricket to the next level, you need to hit that ball down the ground for one. You know you can hit a lot of balls up the ground, but there’s a lot of risk attached to that.’ I think he took that on board, he got a hundred in the next one-day in Kolkata,” Kirsten recalled.
