🇮🇳 Rohit Sharma

Rohit Gurunath Sharma was born on April 30, 1987, in Bansod, Nagpur, in central Maharashtra, to Gurunath Sharma (a transport-firm worker) and Purnima Sharma. He was raised largely by his uncle and grandparents in Borivali, Mumbai, while his parents worked. He was admitted to Swami Vivekanand International School in Mumbai on a cricket scholarship, where his coach Dinesh Lad noticed the back-foot game that would become his international signature.

He played age-group cricket for Mumbai, then domestic first-class cricket. His IPL debut was for Deccan Chargers in 2008. His India ODI debut was against Ireland in Belfast in June 2007. He was, in his first five years as an international, a middle-order ODI player whose career was uncertain.

The conversion came in January 2013, when M. S. Dhoni and India's then-coach Duncan Fletcher promoted Rohit to open the ODI batting. The output across the next decade — three ODI double centuries (209 vs Australia in November 2013, 264 vs Sri Lanka in November 2014, 208* vs Sri Lanka in December 2017) — remains, in 2026, the only triple-double-century ODI opening record in the history of the format.

His Mumbai Indians IPL captaincy from 2013 onwards produced five IPL titles (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020), making MI the most-decorated franchise in the league's history. He became India's full-time limited-overs captain in 2021 and Test captain in 2022, succeeding Virat Kohli across formats.

The 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup, held jointly in the West Indies and the United States in June 2024, was the culmination. India won all of its matches across the group, Super Eight, and knockout stages. The final at Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados, against South Africa, ended with India defending 176 — a chase South Africa had reduced to a single-figure runs-per-over equation in the back half before three Hardik Pandya overs and a Suryakumar Yadav boundary-line catch closed it. Rohit was the captain. Rahul Dravid was the head coach. Both retired from T20I cricket at the trophy presentation.

He continued as India's ODI and Test captain after Barbados. He led India to the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy title, India's third senior ICC white-ball title under his captaincy after the 2024 T20 World Cup. In 2026, at 38, Rohit Sharma's body of work — three ODI double centuries, the highest individual ODI score on record, five IPL captaincy titles, a T20 World Cup win as captain, and a Champions Trophy — places him in the small group of the most-decorated Indian-cricket biographies of the post-Tendulkar era.