While ‘Messi Mania’ swept America and the football world, it was Virat Kohli who racked up the award for the ‘Athlete Of The Year 2023’ hosted by Pubity, which is one of the biggest Instagram pages in the world.
The entertainment and news Instagram page Pubity has over 35 million Instagram followers. Its subsidiary Pubity Sport organized a fan vote system on Instagram, allowing the fans to choose their ‘Athlete Of The Year 2023’.
16 of the top active athletes who had a bumper year were selected for the knockout rounds. Every day, leading into the last day of the year, Pubity Sport opened a polling system for the fans to vote. Apart from Virat Kohli and Lionel Messi, this list included the likes of Novak Djokovic, Pat Cummins, LeBron James, Erling Haaland, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Max Verstappen.
The final round came down to Kohli vs Messi. And Kohli won by a surprisingly huge percentage of votes: 78 percent votes for Kohli to only 28 percent votes for Messi.
It’s Kohli vs Messi in the final voting for the “Athlete of the year” award in one of the biggest sports pages on Instagram – Pubity Sport. pic.twitter.com/gcyLSPbywA
— Johns. (@CricCrazyJohns) December 30, 2023
Virat Kohli stats and numbers in 2023:
Meanwhile, Kohli did have a bumper 2023 with the bat. He is the second-leading run-scorer of the year with 2048 runs across formats at an average of 66, 8 centuries, and 10 fifties. His 8 international hundreds is the highest this year by any batsman.
Only Shubman Gill scored more international runs than Kohli in 2023. However, Gill scored only 106 more runs than Kohli while playing 16 more innings.
The 35-year-old had a record-breaking World Cup 2023 tournament. In the tournament, Kohli surpassed Sachin Tendulkar’s record of 673 runs from the 2003 World Cup and became the first batsman to score more than 700 runs in a World Cup. In the semi-final against New Zealand, Kohli also became the first batsman to raise his 50th ODI century.
However, Kohli and India lost the WTC Final and the World Cup, both to Australia.
Also Read: Scores Of 10 Indian Legends In Their First Test In South Africa Ft. Virat Kohli, Tendulkar, Rohit
