Fact Check: Photo of Virat Kohli flaunting tattoo of ICC trophies on his arm is edited

Star Indian batsman Virat Kohli was part of the Indian cricket team that won the ICC One Day World Cup in 2011 and the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013 under the leadership of MS Dhoni, as well as the ICC T20 World Cup in 2024 under the leadership of Rohit Sharma.

Against this backdrop, an image of Virat Kohli flaunting the tattoos of three ICC trophies on his arm is doing the rounds on social media.

An X user shared the photo and wrote, “Virat Kohli's new tattoo on his hand.” (Archive)

A Threads account, Pluc TV, shared the image and wrote, “We just got over the T20 World Cup win and then we noticed Virat Kohli’s new tattoo of the 2024 World Cup Trophy on his arm.” (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim is false. The viral photo has been edited. The original photo shows Kohli posing for a portrait before the T20 World Cup 2024.

Upon reverse image search, we found two images, including the viral one posted by a fan page X account (Archive) of Virat Kohli on June 3, 2024. The original image does not show trophies tattoos on Kohli’s arm. The account stated that the photos show headshots of Kohli before the T20 World Cup 2024.

Next, we searched for the image using keywords on the stock image website Getty Images and found it published on June 2. The photo, credited to sports photographer Alex Davidson, does not show trophy tattoos on Kohli’s arm.

The description reads: “Virat Kohli of India poses for a portrait prior to the ICC Men's T20 Cricket World Cup West Indies & USA 2024 on June 1, 2024, in New York, New York.”

Here is the comparison of real and edited images.

Where did the edited image emerge from?

During our fact-finding, we discovered that the cricket tracking website CricTracker posted images of Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, and several other international cricketers with tattoos of ICC trophies on their arms on X (A)and Threads (Archive) accounts on July 8. These tattoos represented the trophies won by them as captains of their national cricket teams. The caption suggested that it was an imaginative depiction of players displaying tattoos of their ICC achievements.

We also checked Kohli’s Instagram account and found no such images recently posted flaunting tattoos of the ICC trophies on his arm..

Hence, we conclude that the viral image of Virat Kohli flaunting tattoos of three ICC trophies on his arm is edited. The claim that he got these tattoos after the T20 World Cup 2024 victory is false.