3 minutes of readingNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 30, 2026 09:18 am IST
In the world of social media and Instagram, Indian cricketer Virat Kohli has managed to amass an audience that can hardly be matched by anyone. The batsman has over 274 million followers, making him one of the most popular celebrities on the platform. That’s precisely why the entire Internet went into a frenzy when his account temporarily disappeared on Friday morning. Virat’s fans quickly panicked and He wondered if it was just a technical problem. Like every other crisis with the cricketer, they went straight to his wife, actress Anushka Sharma’s, account to ask.
The moment Virat’s account disappeared, his fans feared the worst. Many commented on their fan pages that: “You have already retired from T20 and Test cricket. Why retire from here? We only have one heart; how many times will you break it?” When no response or explanation came that way, fans jumped straight to Anushka’s account and flooded the comments section of her latest post.
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A fan wrote, “Bhabhi, bhaiya kaha hai (Sister-in-law, where is our brother)?” Some asked if Anushka knew where Virat’s phone was or if she knew what he had done with his account. The others implored the actor to recover her husband’s story. However, the clamor soon died down when people realized that Virat’s page was visible again. Just as it disappeared, the page returned to the platform without any explanation. This led her fans to express their happiness in her latest post.
The comments section of Virat Kohli’s latest post. (Photo: Instagram/Virat Kohli)
Comments like “The king is back” and “You’re finally back” began to arrive. One user wrote, “Aaj toh dara hi diya tha aapne (You really scared us today).” With his current followers, Virat occupies third place in the list of the most followed athletes in the world, only behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Compared to Bollywood, Kohli’s 274 million followers held their own against Shah Rukh Khan (49.2 million), Salman Khan (72.5 million), Amitabh Bachchan (37.4 million) and Katrina Kaif (80.2 million).
In 2025, Virat had another incident with Instagram when he liked actor Avneet Kaur’s photo and then claimed that it was a technical issue with the app. He said: “I would like to clarify that while I am deleting my feed, it appears that the algorithm may have mistakenly recorded an interaction. There was absolutely no intention behind this. I request that no unnecessary assumptions be made. Thank you for your understanding.”