Virat Kohli reacts to viral ‘chartered London flights’ rumour ahead of IPL 2026

Mumbai, 17 March 2026 — Virat Kohli has quashed swirling speculation that he sought bespoke trans-continental travel arrangements for the upcoming Indian Premier League season, branding the reports as little more than social-media fiction.

Stories circulating since the weekend claimed the Royal Challengers Bengaluru talisman had asked franchise officials to place a chartered aircraft at his disposal so he could shuttle between India and London whenever the fixture list offered a gap of three days or more. The unverified narrative suggested Kohli, who has increasingly spent portions of his off-season in the United Kingdom, wanted the flexibility to join his family in London without sacrificing match availability.

Kohli answered the chatter with characteristic brevity late on Sunday night, uploading a screenshot of one such article to his Instagram story and overlaying it with a string of laughing-face emojis. The post, visible to his 270 million followers, required no caption; the message was unmistakable: the story was baseless.

The 37-year-old’s social-media rebuttal arrives less than a fortnight before IPL 2026 kicks off on 28 March, when defending champions RCB host Sunrisers Hyderabad at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Kohli, who finally lifted the trophy last season after 18 years with the franchise, remains the emotional and statistical heartbeat of the side.

He enters the tournament on the cusp of multiple milestones. Already the IPL’s all-time leading run-getter with 8,661 runs in 267 matches, including eight centuries and 63 half-centuries, Kohli needs 339 more to become the first player to reach 9,000 IPL runs. Extend the canvas to all T20 cricket for RCB—including the now-defunct Champions League T20—and his aggregate rises to 9,085 from 282 appearances, leaving him 915 short of an unprecedented 10,000 runs for a single IPL franchise.

Globally, Kohli’s T20 résumé reads 13,543 runs in 414 innings, punctuated by nine hundreds and 105 fifties. Another 857 runs will see him join an elite club currently occupied by Chris Gayle (14,562), Kieron Pollard (14,482), Alex Hales (14,449) and David Warner (14,028).

Form is on his side. Last season he amassed 657 runs in 15 innings at an average of 54.75 and a strike rate of 144.71, topping RCB’s charts and finishing third league-wide while rattling off eight consecutive fifty-plus scores.

With the chatter now relegated to the realm of memes, Kohli will hope to let his bat do the talking as he pursues history on home soil once again.