Virat Kohli has announced his retirement from Test cricket after a remarkable 14-year career with India.
After two days of rumours, Virat Kohli confirmed his Test cricket retirement through a post on Instagram.
Virat Kohli, former India captain, has announced his retirement from Test cricket a little over a month before the England tour. The 36-year-old made this decision just days after Rohit Sharma also retired from Tests. The news broke on Saturday morning, surprising many, especially since Kohli isn’t as old as some past players who played longer and hasn’t yet reached 10,000 Test runs. Still, he felt it was the right moment to step away. He finishes with 9230 runs in 113 Tests at an average of 46.8, making him India’s fourth-highest Test run-scorer after Tendulkar, Dravid, and Gavaskar.
Kohli’s retirement means the Sydney Test against Australia was his last. With Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Ravichandran Ashwin now retired, and Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara not in the current setup, India will head into the England series with limited experience. Ravindra Jadeja is expected to be the most experienced player in the squad, which is likely to be announced next week. Now that Kohli has retired from both T20Is and Tests, he will focus only on ODI cricket, where he continues to dominate, with the 2027 World Cup in South Africa being his main goal.
Virat Kohli’s Test career took off in Australia, where he impressed everyone by scoring 692 runs in just four matches, including four centuries. That series, especially his twin centuries in Adelaide, marked the start of his dominance against Australia, a team he eventually scored 3320 runs and nine hundreds against. His final Test series, also against Australia, was less memorable — he scored just 190 runs, with 100 coming in one innings.
Between 2015 and 2019, Kohli was at his best. In 2016, he scored 1215 runs at an average of nearly 76, including a top score of 235 against England. In 2018, he returned to England after a poor tour in 2014 and shone, scoring 593 runs with two centuries and earning the ICC Test Player of the Year award.
However, after December 2019, things changed. Kohli’s form dipped, and he went over three years without a Test century. He stepped down as India’s captain after a series loss to South Africa in 2022. Though he began scoring hundreds again later, he never quite returned to his peak form. By the end of his career, his Test batting average had dropped from over 55 to just under 47. One of his most solid recent performances was a gritty 76 against South Africa in a drawn Test under Rohit Sharma’s captaincy.
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