Virat Kohli ( India )
Virat Kohli (born 5 November 1988) is an Indian international cricketer who plays ODI cricket for the India national team and is a former captain in all formats. He is a right handed batsman and occasional right arm medium pace bowler. Considered one of the greatest all format batsmen in the history of cricket, he is called the King, the Chase Master, and the Run Machine for his skills, records and ability to lead his team to victory. Kohli is the highest run-scorer in the Indian Premier League, third in T20I, third in ODI, and third in international cricket. He has the most ODI centuries and second-most centuries in international cricket with 82 centuries across all formats of the game. He is the only batter to earn 900 rating points in all three formats. 937 points in Test format and 909 points in both ODI & T20I formats.
Kohli was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu family. His mother Saroj Kohli is a housewife while his father Prem Nath Kohli worked as a criminal lawyer. He has an elder brother Vikas and an elder sister Bhawna. His formative years were spent in Uttam Nagar. His early education was at Vishal Bharti Public School. As per his family, Kohli exhibited an early affinity for cricket as a 3 year old. He would pick up a bat and request his father bowl to him.
MS Dhoni ( India )
Mahendra Singh Dhoni( born 7 July 1981) is an Indian professional cricketer who plays as a right handed batter and a wicket-keeper. Widely regarded as one of the most prolific wicket-keeper batsmen and captains and one of the greatest ODI batsmen, he represented the Indian cricket team and was the captain of the side in limited overs formats from 2007 to 2017 and in test cricket from 2008 to 2014. Dhoni has captained the most international matches and is the most successful Indian captain. He has led India to victory in the 2007 ICC World Twenty20, the 2011 Cricket World Cup, and the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, being the only captain to win three different limited overs ICC tournaments. He also led the teams that won the Asia Cup in 2010, 2016 and was a member of the title winning squad in 2018.
Born in Ranchi, Dhoni made his first class debut for Bihar in 1999. He made his debut for the Indian cricket team on 23 December 2004 in an ODI against Bangladesh and played his first test a year later against Sri Lanka. In 2007, he became the captain of the ODI side before taking over in all formats by 2008. Dhoni retired from test cricket in 2014 but continued playing in limited overs cricket till 2019. He has scored 17,266 runs in international cricket including 10,000 plus runs at an average of more than 50 in ODIs.
In the Indian Premier League (IPL), Dhoni plays for Chennai Super Kings (CSK), leading them to the final on ten occasions and winning it five times (2010, 2011, 2018, 2021 and 2023 ) jointly sharing this title with Rohit Sharma . He has also led CSK to two Champions League T20 titles in 2010 and 2014. Dhoni is among the few batsmen to have scored more than five thousand runs in the IPL, as well as being the first wicket-keeper to do so.
In 2008, Dhoni was awarded India’s highest sport honour Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award by Government of India. He received the fourth highest civilian award Padma Shri in 2009 and third highest civilian award Padma Bhushan in 2018. Dhoni holds an honorary rank of Lieutenant colonel in the Parachute Regiment of the Indian Territorial Army which was presented to him by the Indian Army in 2011. In June 2025, he was inducted into ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
Mahindra Singh Dhoni, often known as the “captain cool”, is one of the greatest cricketers in the world. He has 50 million Instagram followers and currently rules various social media platforms for his calmness, astonishing achievements, and captaincy records. In his captaincy, CSK became the most followed IPL team, thanks to his yellow army.
Rohit Sharma ( India )
Rohit Sharma (born 30 April 1987) is an Indian international cricketer and the captain of the India national team in ODIs. He is also a former captain in Tests and T20Is. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest T20I opening batters of all time. He is a right-handed batsman who plays for Mumbai Indians in Indian Premier League and for Mumbai in domestic cricket. After the team’s victory at the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup, he announced his retirement from T20Is He was also a member of the teams that won the 2007 T20 World Cup, the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy and the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy.
Sharma holds several batting records which include most runs in T20 Internationals, most sixes in international cricket, most double centuries in ODI cricket , most centuries at Cricket World Cups, and joint most hundreds in Twenty20 Internationals. He also holds the world record for the highest individual score (264) in a One Day International (ODI) and also holds the record for scoring most hundreds (five) in a single Cricket World Cup, for which he won the ICC Men’s ODI Cricketer of the Year award in 2019. He is the first and only captain to lead a team in all ICC tournament finals.
He formerly captained Mumbai Indians and the team has won five Indian Premier League titles in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020 under him, making him the most successful captain in IPL history, sharing this record with MS Dhoni. He is also one of two players who have played in every edition of the T20 World Cup, from the inaugural edition in 2007 to the latest one in 2024. He is the only Indian player to win two T20 World Cups. He became the second Indian captain to win a T20 World Cup.
He has received two national honours , the Arjuna Award in 2015 and the prestigious Khel Ratna Award in 2020 by the Government of India. Under his captaincy, India won the 2018 Asia Cup and the 2023 Asia Cup, the seventh and eighth time the country won the title, both in ODI format as well as the 2018 Nidahas Trophy, their second overall and first in T20I format.
Sachin Tendulkar ( India )
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar ( born 24 April 1973) is an Indian former international cricketer who captained the Indian national team. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest cricketers of all time, and is the holder of several world records, including being the all-time highest run-scorer in both ODI and Test cricket, receiving the most player of the match awards in international cricket, and being the only batsman to score 100 international centuries. Tendulkar was a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha by presidential nomination from 2012 to 2018.
Tendulkar took up cricket at the age of eleven, made his Test match debut on 15 November 1989 against Pakistan in Karachi at the age of sixteen, and went on to represent Mumbai domestically and India internationally for over 24 years. In 2002, halfway through his career, Wisden ranked him the second-greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Don Bradman, and the second-greatest ODI batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. The same year, Tendulkar was a part of the team that was one of the joint-winners of the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy. Later in his career, Tendulkar was part of the Indian team that won the 2011 Cricket World Cup, his first win in six World Cup appearances for India. He had previously been named “Player of the Tournament” at the 2003 World Cup.
Tendulkar has received several awards from the government of India: the Arjuna Award (1994), the Khel Ratna Award (1997), the Padma Shri (1998), and the Padma Vibhushan (2008). After Tendulkar played his last match in November 2013, the Prime Minister’s Office announced the decision to award him the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award. He was the first sportsperson to receive the award and, as of 2024, is the youngest recipient. In 2010, Time included Tendulkar in its annual list of the most influential people in the world. Tendulkar was awarded the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for cricketer of the year at the 2010 International Cricket Council (ICC) Awards.
On 14 November 1987, at age 14, Tendulkar was selected to represent Bombay in the Ranji Trophy for the 1987–88 season, but he was not selected for the final eleven in any of the matches, though he was often used as a substitute fielder. A year later, on 11 December 1988, aged 15 years and 232 days, Tendulkar made his debut for Bombay against Gujarat at Wankhede Stadium and scored 100 (not out) in that match, making him the youngest Indian to score a century on debut in first-class cricket. He was selected to play for the team by Bombay captain Dilip Vengsarkar, who watched him play Kapil Dev in Wankhede Stadium’s cricket practice nets, where the Indian team had come to play against the touring New Zealand team. Tendulkar followed this by scoring a century each in his Deodhar and Duleep Trophy debuts, which are also India’s domestic cricket tournaments.
Tendulkar finished the 1988–89 Ranji Trophy season as Bombay’s highest run-scorer. He scored 583 runs at an average of 67.77 and was the eighth-highest run-scorer overall.[58] In both 1988 and 1989, he was picked for a young Indian team to tour England under the Star Cricket Club banner. In the 1990–91 Ranji Trophy final, which Bombay narrowly lost to Haryana, Tendulkar’s 96 from 75 balls was key to giving Bombay a chance of victory as it attempted to chase 355 from only 70 overs on the final day.
Hardik Pandya ( India )
Hardik Himanshu Pandya (born 11 October 1993) is an Indian international cricketer who plays for the Indian cricket team. He is an all-rounder who is a right-handed middle order batsman and fast medium bowler. He is considered one of the best all rounders in the world in white-ball cricket. Pandya has represented India in all three formats. He captains Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League and occasionally plays for Baroda in domestic cricket. He has captained the Indian team in white-ball cricket and was the vice captain of the team that won the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Pandya was born on 11 October 1993 in Choryasi, Surat, Gujarat. His father, Himanshu Pandya, ran a small car finance business in Surat which he shut down and moved to Vadodara when Hardik was five to provide his sons with better cricket training facilities. Himanshu Pandya worked as a loan consultant in Vadodara. He enrolled his two sons into Kiran More’s cricket academy in Vadodara. Lacking finances, the Pandya family lived in a rented apartment in Gorwa, with the brothers using a second-hand car to travel to the cricket ground. Hardik studied at the MK High School until ninth grade before dropping out to focus on cricket.
Pandya made steady progress in junior-level cricket, and according to Krunal, “won a lot of matches single-handedly” in club cricket. In an interview with the Indian Express, Hardik said that he was dropped from his state age-group teams due to his “attitude problems”. He added that he was “just an expressive child” who did not like to hide his emotions.