Former Indian captain Virat Kohli made his international debut on this day 14 years ago. During this illustrious journey, Kohli got Chase Master, Run Machine and many new names. But do you know how was Kohli’s performance in his first match? If not, we’ll let you know. Virat Kohli played his first international match against Sri Lanka in Dambulla. Virat Kohli, who made a direct place in the Indian team by winning the Under-19 World Cup, was given a chance to open the innings by the then captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

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Kulasekara showed the way to the pavilion by getting Kohli out LBW

In this 50-over match against Sri Lanka, Virat Kohli came out to open the innings with Gautam Gambhir. Gambhir was dismissed on the second ball of the innings and returned to the pavilion and Kohli at the other end was still waiting to play the first ball. Kohli had to face bowlers like Chaminda Vaas, Nuwan Kulasekara and Muttiah Muralidhar in this match. From the very beginning, Kohli was seen struggling a bit. In the 7th over, he got the team the first boundary by hitting a four in the leg side. In the very next over, Kulasekara showed the way to the pavilion by getting Kohli out LBW and thus ended his first innings in international cricket. Kohli could only score 12 runs in 22 balls in his first match. Virat Kohli was a flop in his very first match as an opener.

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Virat Kohli also got a chance to open in the next four matches of this 5-match series and scored 37, 25, 54 and 31 runs respectively. Kohli got a good start every time but he managed to touch the 50 mark only once. Kohli learned a lot from this series and from here his journey to become King Kohli started.

International career of Virat Kohli

Kohli, who made his ODI debut on 18 August 2008, played his first T20 on 12 June 2010 and the first Test on 20 June 2011. Virat Kohli has 12344 runs in ODI cricket with 43 centuries. At the same time, he has scored 3308 and 8074 runs in T20 and Test respectively. Kohli has scored 27 centuries in the longest format of cricket.