‘My U-13 players score better than Virat Kohli’: Indian football club owner draws bizarre comparison between young footballers and RCB icon

‘My U-13 players score better than Virat Kohli’: Indian football club owner draws bizarre comparison between young footballers and RCB icon originally appeared on Cricket News.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Ranjit Bajaj claims his U13 academy players can beat Virat Kohli’s Yo-Yo score.
• Kohli holds India‘s highest Yo-Yo score of 21.6, recorded in 2025.
• Globally, Alastair Cook tops Yo-Yo charts with a score of 22.3.

Ranjit Bajaj’s bold claim sparks debate about Virat Kohli’s fitness

Virat Kohli has long been regarded as one of the fittest cricketers on the planet.

His diet, energy and athleticism on the field continue to set an example for younger players even at 38 years of age.

But a recent comment from Indian football club owner Ranjit Bajaj has stirred up quite the conversation online.

Bajaj, who heads Minerva Academy as its director and owns Delhi FC, stated that every single Under-13 player at his academy posts a higher Yo-Yo test score than Kohli, going as far as to throw down an open challenge over the claim. He didn’t stop there either, asserting that his Under-15 group would outrun the cricketer by a significant margin.

Bajaj argued that football demands a different level of agility and stamina compared to cricket. He believes that the grassroots fitness culture he has built at his academy can rival, even surpass, a benchmark score long considered elite in Indian cricket circles.

He confidently asserted that his academy’s youngest age-group players could outperform Kohli on this particular fitness metric and openly invited him to test that claim directly against his trainees.

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What did Ranjit Bajaj say about Virat Kohli?

In a podcast named Figuring Out, hosted by Raj Shamani, Bajaj made the comments, challenging Virat to a Yo-Yo test.

“All my U13 players have a higher Yo-Yo score than Virat Kohli. I’m openly challenging it. My U15 players will outrun Virat Kohli by far,” he said. 

Nonetheless, Kohli still holds the record for the highest Yo-Yo test score ever recorded by an Indian cricketer, having clocked an impressive 21.6 back in 2025. The test took place in London under BCCI supervision, ahead of India’s tour of Australia the same year. 

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RankPlayerYo-Yo Test Score1Virat Kohli21.62Mayank Dagar19.33Manish Pandey19.24Shubman Gill18.75Rishabh Pant17.2

How does Virat Kohli’s Yo-Yo score compare globally?

Looking beyond India, several international cricketers have pushed well past typical fitness benchmarks to record genuinely remarkable scores.

Former England captain Alastair Cook tops the global charts with an astonishing 22.3, a number that reportedly matches the kind of endurance levels seen among elite professional footballers.

Pakistan’s Shan Masood and Mohammad Rizwan both touched 22.1 at their National Cricket Academy, while Bangladesh pacer Al-Amin Hossain matched that same figure during a national fitness trial. Jonny Bairstow rounds off the top tier with a score of 21.8, narrowly behind Cook’s long-standing benchmark.

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PlayerCountryYo-Yo ScoreAlastair CookEngland22.3Shan MasoodPakistan22.1Mohammad RizwanPakistan22.1Al-Amin HossainBangladesh22.1Jonny BairstowEngland21.8

Is Ranjit Bajaj’s comparison fair?

Comparing a 38-year-old cricketer’s endurance score to that of teenagers training specifically for football feels like an unfair fight from the start. The sports simply demand different things physically.

That said, Bajaj’s larger point about grassroots fitness culture in Indian sport is worth paying attention to, regardless of how provocatively he chose to frame it.

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