The king of modern cricket steps away from Test cricket, leaving behind an unparalleled legacy of victories, passion, and relentless pursuit of excellence.
The march of time spares no one, not even an icon of Test cricket and, in fact, of all three formats, like Virat Kohli. He is the second senior batsman who is quitting the longest form of the game, but leaves it wistfully as Tests "tested, shaped and taught lessons,” like none other.
It is a pity that the curtains had to come down at the same time on Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, two captains who led Team India in successive World Test Championship finals. It was time, however, as both batsmen were battered by the ravages of time into underperforming, thus hastening the end of their Test careers.
Kohli had few equals in his sheer commitment to Tests in which he was India’s ‘winningest’ captain and the world’s fourth most winning skipper with 40 victories in 68 Tests and only 17 defeats. At one time, he was world cricket’s greatest all-format performer with his averages above the astonishing benchmark of 50 runs per innings in all three forms of the game.
Through the quiet grind of long days under the ‘Test’ sun, Kohli topped 9,000 runs and for long the preeminent batsman on whose runs the team’s fortunes depended. A combative player who sometimes allowed the extraneous to get under his skin, Kohli remained a steadfast believer in wearing proudly the country’s colours in all forms of the game until the demands of modern cricket became too much for any athlete’s physical attributes to withstand, even the fittest player that Kohli still is.
Technically sound and enormously hungry for runs, Kohli began slipping in Tests only when his flirting with the ball beyond his off stump became a patent technical weakness that pace bowlers exploited. He would have loved to cope with it all as well as the captaincy, if given to him as a farewell gift, on a final tour of England. But the moving ball would have tested him like never before and it was time for Team India to move on as another WTC cycle starts.
If Sachin was the wunderkind who transformed into a performing genius, Dravid the ‘Wall’ and Sehwag the intrepid adventurer, Kohli was the king who dictated how Team India would play the modern game with its triple challenge while aiming for the highest standards in the Test arena. He played Tests positively, invariably picking a fifth bowler and accepting any challenge as he was also the master of the chase when batting was perhaps at its most challenging.
