With each passing day, the realisation that Virat Kohli has retired from Test cricket continues to hit hard. And just imagine how tough it’ll be when, at the fall of India’s second wicket in the first Test against England in Headingley starting June 20, No. 18 Virat Kohli no longer walks out to bat. Irrespective of who it is – comeback man Karun Nair or India’s newly-appointed captain Shubman Gill, no Virat Kohli at No. 4 promises to be a tough pill to swallow.
Virat Kohli announced his retirement from Test cricket last month, sending shockwaves through the world of cricket. The veteran batter’s retirement came shortly after his skipper Rohit Sharma had made a similar decision, and just ahead of the BCCI’s squad announcement for the five-match England series.
Virat Kohli has announced his retirement from Test cricket, bringing the curtain down on a career that spanned 14 years and included 123 Tests – 68 of them as captain – in which he scored 9230 runs at an average of 46.85. Virat Kohli had communicated his desire to retire from Test cricket to the BCCI ahead of the big five-match series in England starting June 20, for which he was expected to be part of the squad. It was learnt at the time that Kohli had been having conversations on the matter with officials of the BCCI for the past month or so.
Virat Kohli’s stellar test cricket career spanning over 14 years
Virat Kohli made his Test debut on India’s tour of the West Indies in mid-2011, and after a quiet start in Kingston where he scored 4 and 15 – he totaled 76 runs in five innings on that tour – Kohli first showed glimpses of his ability against West Indies at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium later that year, scoring 52 and 63. It was a struggle initially on the subsequent, ill-fated tour of Australia, where India lost 4-0, but Kohli finished the series on a high, scoring his first Test century in the Adelaide Test.
Virat Kohli’s first really big Test series was also in Australia, in 2014-15, when he scored twin centuries in Adelaide, and followed it up with centuries in Melbourne and Sydney to aggregate 692 runs for the series at an average of 86.50. By then, he was also India’s Test captain. MS Dhoni was the designated captain, but missed the first Test because of a thumb injury, leading to Kohli’s elevation.
MS Dhoni returned for, and captained in, the second Test in Brisbane and continued in the position for the third Test in Melbourne, but retired from the format altogether after that game. Kohli took over the reins after that.
A glorious period ensued, where India won 40 of the 68 games Kohli led in, losing just 17. The 40 wins made Kohli India’s most successful Test captain of all time – Dhoni with 27 from 60 and Sourav Ganguly with 21 from 49 rank below him – and, at the time of his retirement, places him at No. 4 on the overall list of captains with the most Test wins, behind Graeme Smith (53 from 109), Ricky Ponting (48 from 77) and Steve Waugh (41 from 57).
The tour of England in 2018 was another high point. Virat Kohli was the top run-getter across the two sides in the five Tests, aggregating 583 at an average of 59.30 with two centuries. That it came after he had scored just 134 runs in ten innings on the previous tour, in 2014, made the performance that much more special. That year, 2018, was also his best in terms of aggregate for a year, when he scored 1322 runs.
During his golden run, he averaged 75.93 in 2016, 75.64 in 2017, 55.08 in 2018, and 68.00 in 2019. During that period between 2016 and 2018, Virat Kohli scored 3596 runs in 35 Tests at an average of 66.59, with 14 hundreds and eight fifties in 58 innings.
Virat Kohli had taken the cricketing world by surprise by announcing his retirement from Tests last month, more than a month before the five-match India-England series was to get underway and less than a week after captain Rohit Sharma bid goodbye to the format. Both Rohit and Virat Kohli had endured a disappointing run in the recent tour of Australia, where the former scored just 31 runs in three Tests and the latter’s form quickly nosedived after an unbeaten 100 in Perth.
Former India coach Ravi Shastri feels Virat Kohli’s Test retirement could have been handled better as he deserved a proper farewell and said he would have reinstated him as captain after the Australia series. Virat Kohli called time on his Test career last month, finishing with 123 matches, 9,230 runs at an average of 46.85, including 30 centuries.
Emotional Ravi Shastri holds BCCI responsible for Virat Kohli’s retirement
No one in Indian cricket has been more closely aligned with, or vocal in admiration of, Virat Kohli than Ravi Shastri. From watching his meteoric rise to guiding him through triumphs and turmoil, Shastri has witnessed Virat Kohli’s Test journey unfold from point-blank range. If there was one person who believed Virat Kohli still had miles to go in the whites, it was the former India head coach.
But on Wednesday, in an unusually emotional moment, Shastri let his guard down. Speaking on Sony Sports ahead of India’s five-match Test series against England, the veteran couldn’t hide the lump in his throat as he opened up about Virat Kohli’s sudden retirement from Test cricket.
It wasn’t a decision made overnight. Virat Kohli had, in fact, confided in Shastri as early as April, as the latter earlier revealed on The ICC Review. Yet, now that the decision is final, it has left even someone as composed as Shastri visibly moved. Shastri felt that Virat Kohli, who is often hailed as ‘an ambassador for Test match cricket’, deserved a better way to say farewell to the format been synonymous with, indicating that his retirement could have been handled better.
“Virat has announced his retirement from Test matches, which is sad, you know, because he’s a great player. A great player. It’s only when you go that people truly realise how big a player you were. Stats don’t do justice — it’s about the way he carried himself, especially as an ambassador for Test match cricket, particularly overseas. The way he played at Lord’s, and how his team turned things around — it was unreal. And I’m glad I was a part of it,” Shastri said.
“I feel sad that he’s gone the way he has — suddenly. I think it could have been handled better, maybe with more communication.”
Ravi Shastri further said that the Ajit Agarkar-led BCCI selection committee missed the opportunity in naming Kohli as the Test captain again.
“If I had anything to do with it, I would’ve made him captain straight after Australia,” he added.
The Delhi batter had stepped down from Test captaincy back in 2022, after the end of the tour of South Africa, after which Rohit Sharma was confirmed as the all-format skipper. In the wake of the series loss against New Zealand and Australia, reports had emerged that a senior player in the squad was keen to take up the leadership role. Although the name was never revealed, it was widely speculated to be Kohli. Shastri’s words, though indirectly, hinted that it was Virat Kohli who wanted to captain India again, but it was a negative from the BCCI.
Virat Kohli’s retirement came a week after skipper Rohit Sharma retired from the long format after a poor season with the bat. It resulted in India appointing Shubman Gill as their Test captain, with his first assignment being the upcoming tour of England.
Virat Kohli finished his Test career as India’s most successful red-ball captain, winning 40 out of 68 matches. Under his leadership, India dominated the Test rankings for the second half of the 2010s and finished as runners-up in the 2021 WTC edition. Virat Kohli also led India to their first-ever Test series win in Australia with a 2-1 result in 2018/19. The 36-year-old also captained India to a 2-1 series lead in England in 2021 before the tour was postponed due to COVID-19.
Captaincy aside, Virat Kohli also finished as India’s fourth all-time leading run-scorer in Tests with 9,230 runs at an average of almost 47 in 123 outings. His 30 Test centuries also rank fourth among Indian batters behind only Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and Sunil Gavaskar. Despite a brilliant overall Test career, the veteran struggled with the bat since 2020, scoring only three centuries in his last 39 matches. The upcoming England tour will be India’s first in Tests without Kohli since 2011.
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