Kevin Pietersen and Virat Kohli
Indian skipper Virat Kohli on Thursday shared a throwback picture of himself on his Instagram handle, captioning it, "#TransformationThursday and my reaction says it all..." wherein he poses with a stunned look at his chubby self. Moments later, former England captain Kevin Pietersen same up with a cheeky and hilarious response.
"I remember that guy on the left!!!!" Pietersen replied.
The picture shows two images of Kohli. On the right sits the image of his previous chubby self while the left side shows Kohli looking amazed at his old picture. The transformation from a chubby cricketer to a fitness freak has been the key reason behind Kohli's emergence and subsequent dominance as a cricketer all through the last decade.
Kohli amassed 20,960 runs across formats in the last decade, averaging 57.58 with 69 centuries and 98 fifties. This makes Kohli not just the leading run-scorer in this decade with South Africa's Hashim Amla standing a distant second with 15,185 runs in 286 matches, the 31-year-old is also 1726 runs clear of all-time second-placed Ricky Ponting (18962 runs in 363 matches between 2000 and 2009). Sachin Tendulkar stands sixth in the list with 15962 runs in 301 matches between 2000 and 2009.
Breaking down his international numbers, Kohli recorded 11125 runs in 227 ODI matches between 2010 and 2019 - the best figures ever by a player considering any decade. In Tests, he scored 7,202 runs in 84 matches this decade, which is the second-highest run-getter in this decade after England's Alastair Cook (8,818 runs in 111 matches). In T20Is, Kohli managed 2633 runs in 75 matches and finished the decade as the highest run-scorer in the format.
