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Cricket PlayersVirat Kohli becomes 1st Indian to cross 200 million followers on Instagram
Virat Kohli is the third most followed sportsperson on Instagram with football greats Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo the only ones who are above the former India captain.
Virat Kohli's popularity tends to cross the boundaries of his sport at times and an example of that was served up on Tuesday when he crossed 200 million followers on Instagram. Kohli is the first Indian to cross the mark and just the third sportsperson after football greats Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Messi and Ronaldo are the only athletes to have more followers than Kohli. Argentina captain Messi currently has 334 million followers while Portugal skipper Ronaldo leads the charts with 451 million followers. Brazil football star Neymar is behind Kohli on fourth with 175 million followers.
Kohli has reached the mark despite an alarming slump in form in recent years. He has not scored an international century since November 2019 and had a season to forget in the 2022 Indian Premier League (IPL). Kohli, who holds the record for most runs scorer in the tournament, managed just 341 runs at an average of 22.73 and strike rate of 115.98 in 16 matches for Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Kohli gave up captaincy in T20Is after the 2021 T20 World Cup and was later removed as the ODI captain. Rohit Sharma replaced him in both positions.
He then resigned as India's Test captain as well after India's series in South Africa, with Rohit replacing him there as well. Kohli had also stepped down as captain of RCB after the 2021 season of the IPL, thus marking 2022 the first year in nearly a decade in which he is not captaining any of the teams that he is playing for,
