These are busy days for Virat Kohli. While the cameras chase him for the right (499 runs in the current series in Australia and counting) as well as wrong (the incessant sledging bouts) reasons, India’s latest Test captain is back in the news again, albeit for a different cause.
On Friday, he posted a selfie on his Twitter handle (@imVkohli) and penned these lines: ‘Wow that was a quick ride to 5 million! Great start for the new year. Thank you all for making it possible :).’
Yes, Kohli had clocked a landmark, however trivial it might sound, with five million plus followers, hanging onto his words on cyberspace. To be precise, he currently has 5,005,072 tweeple peering into his account and that figure would have increased manifold by the time this article is read. Kohli indeed is the numero-uno when it comes to being the most-followed Indian sportsperson on Twitter. It is a validation of his rapid growth amidst the Twitterati, a world that compresses thoughts and views into 140 characters. A world, he joined in September 2009.
If brevity is the soul of Twitter, there is obviously no cap on numbers when it comes to those who follow and in that Kohli is the undisputed king. Just a fortnight ago, he went past Sachin Tendulkar and is now well ahead of the maestro (4.91 million followers) and M.S. Dhoni (3.37). With multiple interests and a quick word on all matters sporting, the brands he promotes and the world at large, Kohli is active on Twitter and remains a youth-magnet.
That politicians and actors still hold sway over public discourse is very much evident as Kohli’s Twitter-figure pales in comparison to those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (9.15), Amitabh Bachchan (12.39) and Aamir Khan (10.43), just to name a few. But ‘Brand Kohli’ with a relatively young age of 26, a long road ahead and the added allure of being the India Test captain, is here to stay and grow. As for being judged in posterity, Kohli, despite his meteoric rise in cricket and Twitter, still has a long way to go before he is whispered in the same breath as the man he replaced at number four in Tests – Tendulkar. That long appraisal can still wait, for now, the Delhi lad reigns online and he is grinning away to glory on Twitter.
Wow that was a quick ride to 5 million! Great start for the new year. Thank you all for making it possible :) >pic.twitter.com/Vr2iDabrCA
— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) >January 2, 2015
