Virat Kohli followed in Rohit Sharma’s footsteps in announcing his retirement from Test cricket, marking the end of a golden era. The Delhi cricketer becomes the second veteran cricketer in a week to call it quits from red-ball cricket after skipper Rohit hung up his boots last week.
For the past few days, reports of Virat conveying his decision to the Board of Control of Cricket in India and the Indian Cricket Board trying to convince him to stay on are doing the rounds. But in trademark style, Virat put all the rumours to bed by announcing the decision on Instagram on the stroke of noon on Monday.
The 36-year-old batter, who made his Test debut in 2011, admitted that it wasn’t an easy call to make but asserted that he gave his all to the team during his 14-year-long career.
While he became renowned for his heroics in ODI cricket, owing mainly to his consistency of playing big, match-winning knocks in pressure situations, his legacy in Test cricket is also one to be celebrated.
Virat Kohli’s illustrious Test career: A statistical overview
Kohli featured in 123 Tests for India, scoring 9230 runs with 30 hundreds at an average of 46.85. He finishes his career at the seventh spot in the most Tests played for India list, while only three players – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sunil Gavaskar – are ahead of the modern-day great in the list of most Test runs for India. His 30 centuries are also the fourth highest by an Indian batter in Tests.
Kohli loved to notch up big scores. His seven double-hundreds are the most by an Indian batter and the highest by any batter in Tests since his debut.
While Kohli asserted his supremacy for a large part of his Test career, there were times when he looked completely out of depth. His career, split into three halves, was a rollercoaster with several ups and downs.
Despite showing his super-human-like abilities throughout his career, Kohli proved he was human after all at the dusk of his Test career.
Rise, Reign, and Decline
In the five years of his Test career, Kohli scored just over 2000 runs in 39 Test matches at a dismal average of 30.72. Among 32 top-order batters with 50 or more Test innings in this phase, Kohli’s average, remarkably, is the fourth lowest.
The dramatic fall from grace in his last phase of career tells a telling story of his waning powers. In the last ten Tests, Kohli managed just 382 runs in 19 innings at an average of 22.47 – damning stats that must have convinced him of quitting before a high-stakes England tour in June.
If the last part of his career was bad, the start was good, if not spectacular.
In his first 24 Tests, he made 1721 runs at an average of 46.51, including six hundreds. However, he was found wanting in the series in England, where he was bamboozled against the moving ball in English conditions. Kohli could only score just 134 runs in ten innings in the series, but took this failure as a motivation to bounce back stronger than ever.
From the start of the 2014-15 season to the end of calendar year 2019, Kohli scored a whopping 5347 runs in 55 Tests and hit a remarkable 21 centuries and 13 half-centuries. Only Steven Smith and Joe Root – two of the other three batters in the fab four – scored more than Kohli during this period, with the Aussie being the only batter to average higher than Kohli’s 63.65 during that period among 72 batters to score 1000 or more runs.
Kohli was at his absolute peak between the 2016 and the 2018-19 seasons. In a remarkable 18-month and 33-innings period, Kohli scored an eye-watering six double centuries – a spree which started against the West Indies in North Sound in July 2016. This marauding run was the second-most prolific run of 34 Test innings in terms of double-hundreds after Don Bradman’s.
It was this period when “King Kohli” reigned supreme over Test cricket, with no one scoring more runs than him and no one with at least 250 runs averaging higher than him in this period. Kohli was far ahead in terms of runs and average from his “Fab Four” rivals.
Virat Kohli’s retirement from Test cricket marks the end of a remarkable era for Indian cricket. After a stellar career spanning 14 years, Kohli announced his decision, following Rohit Sharma’s recent retirement. While his later years saw a dip in form, his peak performance between 2016-2019 remains unparalleled. His legacy as one of India’s most impactful Test batsmen is secure. Cricket Sports News: Latest Cricket News, Cricket Live Score, Sports Breaking News from Sports Today
