Days after Rohit Sharma announced his retirement from Test cricket, a report claimed that India stalwart Virat Kohli has informed BCCI of his intention to call it quits from the longest format of the game. As reported by The Indian Express, Kohli informed BCCI about his decision but senior officials have urged him to change his mind.
“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 The Indian Express. India’s selection committee will meet in a few days to choose the side for the next five-Test series in England.
As per the report, Kohli has been contemplating the decision ever since he had a poor run following his first-Test century at the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia earlier this year.
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India will have a mainly untested middle-order to team up with KL Rahul, Shubman Gill, and Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top, and Rishabh Pant further down the order if Kohli doesn't change his mind since Rohit is also out of the equation. In addition, India will be without the leadership of two seasoned players who have together guided the Test team for almost 11 years. In December 2014, Kohli was named India's Test captain, and in February 2022, Rohit took over.
Rohit declared his retirement after reports initially revealed that the selectors were trying to choose a younger player to be captain for the upcoming Test cycle. According to insiders, Shubman Gill is the leading candidate to succeed Rohit as Test captain.
In 123 Test matches for India, the 36-year-old Kohli has amassed 9,230 runs at an average of 46.85. Over the past five years, his average has decreased, totaling 1,990 runs in 37 games with three hundreds. He finished with an average of 23.75 from five Test matches during the most recent tour of Australia. Kohli got out to deliveries outside off stump seven times during the trip out of the eight times he got out.
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Later, he spoke about the disappointment from that tour during a RCB event in March saying: “I might not have an Australia tour again in me in four years time.” Kohli had also discussed the psychological strain following the recent Test failures. “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.”
Kohli elaborating on the idea and 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’.”
Following India's victory in the T20 World Cup in the West Indies last year, the star batsman had announced his retirement from T20Is. Despite that he was at his best during this IPL, scoring 505 runs at a strike rate of 143.46 in 11 games, including seven fifties.
He also talked about a conversation he had with former captain Rahul Dravid at the RCB event, which helped him refocus his thoughts on 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 said.
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