‘Remember the guy on the left’: Kevin Pietersen’s hilarious message on Virat Kohli’s throwback image

When Virat Kohli burst on to the scene, he was a brash, chubby young man who looked like taking on the world in his own terms. In several interviews, he has confessed that he did not take his fitness or diet seriously and for him, training meant spending a few hours in the nets. However, 10 years down the line, that brash young man has given away to a lean, fit run-scoring machine who is redefining batting with every match. The Indian skipper has owned this decade and has set in place a peerless example for the rest of the players to follow. Taking to Instagram, he shared a picture of himself from 10 years ago and also compared it to one of his recent pictures. The transformation is for all to see, the chubby man on the left is smiling at a player with the perfect jawline.

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Former England batsman Kevin Pietersen who has shared the dressing room with Kohli back in 2009-2010 when he played for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, offered a hilarious comment when he said: “I remember that guy on the left!!!!”

Such has been Kohli’s impact on the decade that he finds himself in all of Wisden’s Team of the decade. Also, he is the sole Indian to be named in the top 5 cricketers of the decade.

“His genius has been to rise, time and again, to the challenge. Between the end of the England tour in 2014 and the second Test against Bangladesh at Kolkata in November, Kohli averaged 63, with 21 hundreds and 13 fifties,” said Wisden about Kohli.

“In many ways, there isn’t. Since the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar and the gradual waning of MS Dhoni, no cricketer in the world has operated under such daily pressure as Kohli,” it further added.