Tests no more: Kohli announces retirement from format
Kohli, now 36, is many things to many people, but he will be remembered as the man everyone wanted to emulate, on field and off
Virat Kohli, the master of the ODI chase, built his game the way he wore down targets, with strokes big and small.
When he felt his fitness was lacking, he set himself new standards.
When he realised his technique was flawed, he broke it down, then rebuilt it, piece by piece, till it was stronger.
When an opponent came at him, he returned the favour.
And when someone targeted his teammates, he defended them.
Kohli, now 36, is many things to many people, but as he announced his decision to retire from Test cricket, he will be remembered as the man everyone wanted to emulate, on field and off.
He focused on fitness; everyone talked fitness. He sported a beard; the others threw away their razors. He was in-your-face; his teammates practised the same attitude. And together, they made India one of the most respected (and feared teams) in world cricket.
A cold, hard look at the numbers will tell you that Kohli played 123 Tests, scoring 9230 runs at an average of 46.85, with 30 100s and 31 fifties and a top score of 254*. Those are impressive by any standard, but would have been so much better (his average was 55.10 at his peak in 2019) if his form hadn’t slumped over the last five years (37 Tests, 1990 runs at an average of 32.09).
Perhaps that was the reason he decided it was time.
“It’s been 14 years since I first wore the baggy blue in Test cricket. Honestly, I never imagined the journey this format would take me on. It’s tested me, shaped me, and taught me lessons I’ll carry for life,” Kohli said in a statement on his Instagram account on Monday morning. “There’s something deeply personal about playing in whites. The quiet grind, the long days, the small moments that no one sees but that stay with you forever”.
“As I step away from this format, it’s not easy -- but it feels right. I’ve given it everything I had, and it’s given me back so much more than I could’ve hoped for. I’m walking away with a heart full of gratitude -- for the game, for the people I shared the field with, and for every single person who made me feel seen along the way. I’ll always look back at my Test career with a smile.”
He won’t be smiling alone. When India saw him stand toe-to-toe against the Aussies in 2014, they felt a sense of pride. The four centuries he scored in the series announced his arrival on the Test scene. He wore his heart on the sleeve and encouraged the rest of his mates to do the same.
His Test batting was at its absolute best between 2016 and 2019. From 2016 to 2018, he became the first Indian player to score 1,000+ Test runs in three consecutive calendar years. With the exception of Australia, he averaged in excess of 50 against every other opponent he played in this period.
He excelled across formats in this period. Between 2016 and 19, he averaged 66.69 in Tests, 80.98 in ODIs and 59.88 in T20s. No other cricketer of his generation found the key to the tempo of modern cricket as well as he did.
Perhaps his success as a batter helped his captaincy or maybe his captaincy helped his batting, but there is no denying that Indian cricket moved forward under him. In 68 matches, India won 40 and lost just 17 with 11 drawn. It made him India’s most successful skipper in Tests. Among captains (across countries) who have captained at least 50 Tests, he comes third by win percentage, after Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting.
His captaincy mirrored his batting -- it was all about intent.
For much of India’s time as a Test nation, the team was a batting-first unit. But Kohli wanted to win away matches and for that he knew things would need to change.
So while many of his predecessors preferred having an extra batter in tough conditions, Kohli went the other way and said: “It will be the bowlers who will win us Test matches”.
He was such a force of nature when he took over as skipper that the BCCI had little option but to go along with his plan. It worked . India started being more competitive away from home and his call to arms often got the best out of the bowlers too. For a while, India’s pace battery (Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah and Umesh Yadav) was the most talked about in the world.
The pace battery was boosted by the free hand Kohli gave them and also by a never-seen-before focus on fitness. There was talk of diet, there were selfies in the gym and the yo-yo test became a pre-requisite to entering the team. This was a revolution Indian cricket needed and one that will continue to help it in the years to come.
When the best in the generation refuses to cut corners, the rest simply fall in line. Every Indian cricketer who wants to achieve greatness in Test cricket now has a template to follow and that, too, is Kohli’s legacy.
But the thing that Test fans will miss the most is perhaps his intensity, even when all he was required to do was field in the deep; he seemed to live every ball as if it were the last.
Kohli retired from the T20I format last year after India won the T20 World Cup. Now the Test whites are history too and only ODIs remain. For a cricketer who has achieved almost everything, perhaps there still is a dream unfulfilled.
