King Kohli: A force of nature

Speculation was rife for several months that Virat Kohli’s Test career was nearing its end.

Yet, when the immensely popular 36-year-old announced his retirement from red-ball cricket, it caught everybody by surprise, especially because it was sprung upon the world within five days of his team-mate Rohit Sharma calling it a day.

The simultaneous departure of the two contemporary greats from the Test arena will doubtless leave a crater-size hole in the Indian batting lineup. But, then, when have the country’s cricket administrators been known to preside over smooth transitions?

Why did Kohli matter? He was a crowd-puller, an entertainer celebrated at once for his fitness and flamboyance, his commitment and volatility. His achievements as a batsman and captain in Test cricket, as also in the two other formats of the game, are legendary, but his struggles in the last five years of his career have been nothing short of baffling.

The first decade of Kohli’s 14-year career was exceptional, making him one of the finest batters of his generation. Going by the exceptionally high standards that he set, it remains a mystery why he suddenly lost his mojo post-2020.

Kohli was at his peak until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world. He was an all-conquering force, the very best of the best. Part of the “Fab Four” of world cricket that included England’s Joe Root, Australia’s Steve Smith and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson, he always had his nose slightly ahead of the rest. And then the slump happened.

Kohli was reduced to a shadow of the invincible batter he once was. So, his decision to call time on his Test cricket career is not as surprising as it might seem at first flush. Vijay Merchant once famously said: one should retire when people ask “why” and not when they ask “why not?”. Kohli has probably done just that. He has bowed out before being eased out.

His fans might take some time to reconcile themselves with his final adieu, but it was clear that Kohli no longer figured in the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s future plans.

Kohli’s retirement ahead of the upcoming tour of England is a signal that he himself recognises the need to step aside and make way for the next generation of Indian batsmen. It goes without saying that it won’t be easy to find his replacement.

As Sunil Gavaskar has said, it will be as difficult to fill Kohli’s massive boots as it was to fill Tendulkar’s when the Mumbai master blaster called it a day in 2013.

Between 2011 and 2019, Kohli’s Test batting average was close to 55. In recent years, a weakness crept into his batting. He poked at balls outside the off stump and perished repeatedly in the slip cordon. New Zealand blanked out India in India in a Test series for the first time ever. That debacle was followed by a disastrous tour of Australia.

Kohli began well Down Under, registering an unbeaten century in the second innings of the first Test in Perth. In the next four matches of the series, he managed only 85 runs. It proved to be more than just a temporary loss of form.

The world would have liked to see him cross the 10,000-run mark in Tests. That he is going out 770 runs shy – he has a total of 9,230 runs from his 123 Tests at an average of 46.85 – will never quite add up. His admirers – needless to say, they are legion – will argue that Kohli deserved a final hurrah befitting his stature – a farewell match, if not a full series.

He certainly did. Consider the incredible peaks he scaled. In the 68 Tests that Team India played under his captaincy, 40 ended in wins, making Kohli the most successful Indian captain ever in terms of number of victories.

He is the fourth most successful captain overall in Test history, with only Graeme Smith (53 victories), Ricky Ponting (48) and Steve Waugh (41) ahead of him.

Kohli combined the ferocity of a streetfighter with the spirit of a strategist to marshal his troops. It paid handsome dividends. He completed a task that Sourav Ganguly began and Mahendra Singh Dhoni furthered. He honed Team India into world beaters in all conditions and in all climes.

His seven Test double centuries are the most that an Indian batsman has ever hit. Six of them were registered in a remarkable 33-innings, year-and-a-half streak from mid-2016 to the end of 2017. The last of his double tons – an unbeaten 254 – came in October 2019 in a Test match against South Africa in Pune.

His 30 Test centuries – he was good for many more had he not hit the sort of trough that he did in the final years of his Test career – places him behind only three other Indian batting legends – Tendulkar (%1), Rahul Dravid (36) and Sunil Gavaskar (34). No Indian captain has scored as many centuries as Kohli while leading the team – 20. The next best – Gavaskar with 11 – is way behind.

Nothing sums up the Kohli story in Test cricket as the struggles he encountered after 2019. He had 27 Test centuries behind him by November 2019. He had to wait three and a half years for his next ton – a fluent 186 against Australia on a flat track in Ahmedabad.

Kohli added only two more centuries to his Test tally following that innings, with the last being the 100 not out that he notched up in Perth in November 2024. His class remained beyond doubt. His famed consistency deserted him. It robbed Kohli of the chance to go out in a blaze of glory of the sort that once seemed his for the taking.