Eighteen Seasons, One Shirt: Virat Kohli and RCB
The only player to spend every IPL season with the same franchise, and the long road to the 2025 title.
Players move all the time in the IPL. Auctions break up squads every few years, and even the biggest stars change shirts. Virat Kohli never has. He is the only player to have spent every one of the league's 18 seasons with the same franchise, Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
The beginning: 2008
Kohli joined RCB in 2008, a few weeks after captaining India to victory at the Under-19 World Cup. He was 19, one of the young players signed alongside the league's first big-money stars, and he spent his early seasons learning in a side that included Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Jacques Kallis.
By 2011 he was one of the team's main batters, and in 2013 he became captain, a job he kept until the end of 2021.
2016: the season nobody has matched
In 2016 Kohli scored 973 runs, including four hundreds, the most anyone has made in one IPL season. With AB de Villiers he put on 229 against Gujarat Lions, one of the highest partnerships in IPL history. RCB reached the final, and lost it to Sunrisers Hyderabad by eight runs.
It was the third lost final of Kohli's RCB career, after 2009 and 2011.
The records
- Eight hundreds, more than any other player in the IPL.
- The first batter to reach 8,000 IPL runs, a milestone he passed in 2024.
- Two Orange Caps, eight years apart, in 2016 and 2024.
2025: the title at last
Kohli gave up the captaincy after 2021 but stayed at the heart of the team, and RCB retained him for ₹21 crore before the 2025 mega auction. Under Rajat Patidar, the team finally put everything together. Kohli scored more than 600 runs in the season, and on 3 June 2025 in Ahmedabad, RCB beat Punjab Kings by six runs to win their first title.
Eighteen seasons, one shirt, one trophy. In a league built on change, Kohli's loyalty is its own kind of record.
Stats in this chapter are correct to the end of the 2025 IPL season.
