IPL 2016: Rating the captains of the 8 IPL teams

2. Virat Kohli: Royal Challengers Bangalore – 9/10

Virat Kohli finished as the highest run-scorer of the tournament with 973 runs to his name from 16 matches

The man who has been unstoppable since the advent of the new year was nothing but the same during the IPL as well as he smashed almost all the batting records and rewrote them in his own style. With 973 runs from 16 matches at a stupendous average of 81.08 and a strike rate of 152.03, Kohli broke the records for the most number of runs in a single IPL season, the most number of centuries in a single IPL season – with 4 centuries – and the highest partnership for any wicket in IPL’s history when he put on 229 runs along with AB de Villiers against the Gujarat Lions.

His batting prowess kept aside, the way he regrouped his side and staged one of the most remarkable comebacks ever seen in all of IPL's history was something to stand and behold, as the RCB won 5 games on the trot when they were required to do just that, to make it to the playoffs even after finding themselves at the 7th spot in the points table. Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers also batted superbly at times, and they batted around their captain, Kohli, who played the role of the sheet anchor.

RCB’s bowling, that was regarded to be their weak link, and rightly so, was completely compensated by the efforts of their batting heavyweights, and the additional performances of KL Rahul and Sachin Baby added a cherry to the cake. However, a team cannot win a tournament as long and as challenging as the IPL just on the back of their batsmen, and that weakness came back to haunt the Royal Challengers in the final of the tournament, wherein the Sunrisers Hyderabad plundered the RCB bowling and scored more than 200 runs, which turned out to be too much for the home side against the team considered to have had the best bowling attack of the tournament.