Virat Kohli has told the Indian cricket board (BCCI) that he wishes to retire from Test cricket, but top officials have asked him to reconsider the decision, The Indian Express has learnt.
“He has made up his mind and has informed the board that he is moving on from Test cricket. The BCCI has urged him to rethink as the crucial England tour is coming up. He is yet to revert on the request,” sources told this newspaper.
Kohli’s decision comes on the back of Rohit Sharma’s Test retirement a couple of days ago. India’s selectors are set to meet in a few days to pick the team for the five-Test series in England next month.
It is learnt that Kohli has been contemplating his Test future since the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia earlier this year when he went through a lean run after scoring a century in the first Test.
If Kohli doesn’t change his mind, and with Rohit out of the picture, it will leave India with a largely inexperienced middle-order to join forces with KL Rahul, Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top, and Rishabh Pant later down the order.
Besides, the team will be left without the guiding hands of two veterans who, between them, have led the Test team for nearly 11 years till now. Kohli became India’s Test captain in December 2014 followed by Rohit in February 2022.
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Early this week, The Indian Express had first reported that the selectors were looking to appoint a younger player as captain for the new Test cycle, following which Rohit announced his retirement. Shubman Gill is the frontrunner to replace Rohit as Test captain, according to sources.
The 36-year-old Kohli has played 123 Tests for India and has scored 9,230 runs at an average of 46.85. His average dipped in the last five years, aggregating 1,990 runs in 37 games with three hundreds.
During the recent tour of Australia, he ended up with an average of 23.75 from five Tests. Out of his eight dismissals on the tour, Kohli got out to deliveries outside off stump on seven occasions.
Later, he spoke about the disappointment from that tour during an event in March for his IPL team RCB, saying, “I might not have an Australia tour again in me in four years’ time.”
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Speaking at the event about the mental pressures after the recent Test failures, he had said, “Once you start taking on the energy and the disappointment from the outside, then you start burdening yourself way more… And then you start thinking about things, like ‘I’ve got two or three days left on this tour, I need to make an impact now’. And you start getting more desperate. That’s something I’ve surely experienced in Australia as well.”
Elaborating on that thought, he had said, “Because I got a good score in the first Test. I thought, ‘right, let’s go’. There’s going to be another big series for me. It doesn’t turn out that way. For me, it’s just about the acceptance of ‘okay fine, this is what happened. I’m going to be honest with myself. Where do I want to go? What are my energy levels like’.”
The ace batsman had already retired from T20Is after India won the T20 World Cup in West Indies last year. However, he was in supreme form during this IPL with 505 runs in 11 matches, including three fifties, at a strike rate of 143.46.
At the RCB event, he had also spoken about a chat he had with former captain Rahul Dravid that helped him realign his mental state about his career. “It pretty much comes down to just the pure joy and enjoyment and love for the game. And as long as that love is intact, I will continue to play the game. I have to be honest about that with myself,” he had said.
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“(Dravid) said my competitive streak would not allow me to accept it. Maybe one more. Maybe six more months, whatever. So, I think it’s a fine balance. And you have to just pray and hope that you get clarity when it comes.”
Nearly two months later, it seems Kohli has got that “clarity”.
