Why Virat Kohli is more famous than Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan
Virat Kohli has beaten Bollywood superstars Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan to top the Fame Rankings released by Forbes magazine
India Test captain Virat Kohli was named the most popular celebrity of 2016 in the Forbes India Celebrity 100 List on Friday. The list comprises Bollywood superstars like Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, but they were no match for the prolific cricketer.
The 28-year old finished third behind Salman and Shah Rukh in annual earnings, but there was no stopping Kohli in the Fame Rankings, which are calculated based on the celebrities’ media visibility across print and television and also their social media reach.
India ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is in the fourth spot and Sachin Tendulkar is sixth. Yuvraj Singh, who married actress Hazel Keech last month, took the 13th spot and the 17th spot went to Rohit Sharma.
In the earnings’ list, Salman finished above Shah Rukh to become the top-earning celebrity with an estimated income of Rs 270.33 crore. Kohli’s third-place finish (with an estimated income of Rs 134.44 crore) was an improvement from last year when he finished seventh behind Dhoni. This year, Dhoni slipped to fifth with estimated earnings of Rs 122.48 crore. Tendulkar was seventh with Rs 58 crore.
Kohli, who has 13.4 million followers on Twitter, has been a consistent performer in all three formats and on Thursday was named captain of the ICC ODI team of the year at the 2016 ICC Awards.
Despite having a great year he did get a spot in the ICC Test team of the year and that caused controversy among Indian cricket fans.
Kohli has been in prolific form lately as he was the top scorer in the five-match home Test series against England with 655 runs from five matches. He is also unbeaten in the 22 Tests he has played as captain.