Twitter Reactions: Virat Kohli bags the fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shree

Indian skipper Virat Kohli has been on an upwards climb ever since he donned the role of leading the side. To add another feather to his cap, he was awarded the Padma Shri Award, the fourth highest civilian award in the country. He was honored with the prestigious award by the President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The 28-year-old was amongst the 8 athletes out of the 89 in total who were in the list of Padma Shri recipients on the eve of the Republic Day. The seven other included hockey captain PR Sreejesh, Rio Olympics bronze medalist wrestler Sakshi Malik, gymnast Dipa Karmakar, Paralympian gold medalist Mariyappan Thangavelu and silver medalist Deepa Malik, discus thrower Vikas Gowda and blind cricket team captain Shekhar Naik.

Kohli has had a tremendous couple of years with the India team. Under his leadership, India became the number one Test side in the world and won all the Test series since he became the regular captain. As far as his personal batting record is concerned, he has been in an outstanding form of late as he notched up four double-centuries in Tests this season.

The Delhi lad also became the captain of India’s ODI and T20 squads as well after MS Dhoni decided to step down. India won the ODI series against New Zealand as well as the ODI and T20 series against England under Kohli.

He has been on the rise for so many years and has already embarked himself as one of the best batsmen of all time. His growth in the game has repeatedly given rise to his comparisons with the great Sachin Tendulkar. At the age of 28, he already has 43 international centuries and has close to 14,000 runs to his name across all formats.

Twitter heaped appreciations for him after he received the Padma Shri award.