Nineteen Virat Kohli seasons, rated one at a time. Same legend, wildly different picks.

No name sells a jersey in the Indian T20 league like Virat Kohli’s. In a draft, though, reputation counts for nothing. Play 16-0 rates each player-season on what actually happened that year — so the same man can be the single best pick on the board in one season and expensive dead weight in another.

Nineteen Kohli seasons sit in the draft pool, from 2008 to 2026, with 9,336 runs between them. The game values them wildly differently. Here is every one, rated — with the real stat line and the in-game cap cost for each.

The whole arc, one row at a time

Nineteen seasons, one franchise, and a rating range that runs from the very top of the game to its bottom half. Read down the verdict column and the shape of a career — and of a draft — falls out.

2016 still stands alone

One season towers over the rest. In 2016 Kohli made 973 runs at a strike rate of 152 — the single highest-rated batting season in the entire game, ranked first out of the 1,463 qualifying batting years in the pool. At 23.7 crore it is not cheap, but for a top-order cornerstone it is the closest thing the draft has to a sure thing. It is also the year that most game-breaking squads are built around.

The late surge the draft under-prices

The story most people miss is what Kohli has done since 2023. Four straight seasons rate near the top of the pool — his 2024 lands inside the top one percent of every batting year in the database, with 2026 close behind. Here is the crucial part: they cost lessthan 2016, between 18.8 and 21.9 crore. Same elite tier, lower cap hit. For a cornerstone bat, a recent Kohli season is often the smarter buy than the famous one — it frees up crore to spend elsewhere in the XI.

The forgotten bargains

Rewind to the start and there is a different kind of value. In 2010 Kohli made 307 runs at a strike rate of 145 for half a crore — an above-average batting season for the price of a bench player. His 2013 (634 runs at 139) is a genuinely elite year going for 15.4 crore, the cheapest of all his top-tier seasons. This is the moneyball edge the best squads are built on: pay a fraction for a season that rates like a star.

The trap years

Then there are the seasons that cost a fortune and return a role-player’s output. His 2014 is the priciest Kohli season in the game at 26 crore, for 359 runs at a strike rate of 122. His 2017 asks 23.7 crore for 308 runs. And 2022 — 341 runs at 116 — sits in the bottom half of the entire pool while still costing 20.8 crore. Draft the jersey in one of those years and you have handcuffed the rest of your XI before you have finished picking.

Same name, different pick

That is the whole lesson of the draft in one player. “Virat Kohli” is not a pick — a Kohli season is. In Normal mode every stat and rating is on the table, so you can see exactly which year you are buying. In Expert modethe numbers vanish and you are betting on memory — which is where real cricket knowledge separates the field. Try the daily challenge and see which Kohli you reach for.