new delhi: Virat Kohli entered Indian drawing rooms as a quintessential “West Delhi boy’’, grew on his fans like a never-ending love story with his boundless passion and finally called time on his career in whites when his legion of admirers yearned for one last dance.
In his mind, he knew that although “it is not easy”, it did “feel right”. The question to be asked is when exactly did Kohli get this feeling?.
Perhaps it was after a torrid tour of Australia where he scored only 91 runs after his second innings century in Perth. Swing and bounce together made life difficult and even for the eternal optimists, a second coming looked distant.
Yet, Indian cricket needed him in England but it seems, the mind, more than the body, had taken enough battering to last a lifetime and he didn’t want to go through that rigour for another five Test series. Virat Kohli, the Test devotee, had decided to wave the white flag.
From being the chubby ‘cheeku’ for his seniors, Virat for his contemporaries and now ‘Bhaiyya’ to the juniors, ‘King Kohli’ did traverse a fair distance and experienced joys of highs and the despair of lows in equal measure.
There was an 18-year-old Kohli, who in 2006, put his father Prem Kohli’s last rites on hold, scored 90 to save Delhi from follow on and headed straight to the crematorium from an empty
Feroz Shah Kotla.
And then in 2025, 36-year-old global superstar Kohli was castled by a little known Railways medium pacer Himagshu Sangwan in-front of nearly 20,000 fans, who had come to the Ranji Trophy ground, to watch their hero bat, one last time in whites against a shiny red SG ball.
In the interim 18 years, he scored those 30 Test hundreds and his following grew exponentially.
Honest to his craft
Kohli played cricket for all the right reasons and while the establishment will be replete with “back-stories” about whether there was a nudge or push, no one should have any doubts that Kohli has timed his Test adieu perfectly.
He will still be seen in ODIs, a format where he has been peerless for a decade and a half but Kohli, the Test cricketer till COVID-19 hit our lives, was a different beast.
But in times when attention span of an average Indian fan is as brief as an instagram reel, Kohli made the millennials and Generation Z fall in love with Test cricket, managing to draw their attention away from the glitzy Indian Premier League.
One could call it Kohli fandom and India’s propensity to be a cricket star-loving country but if that brought footfall in the stands, would anyone mind?
His Test form was on the wane for some years now and that final average of 46.85 doesn’t really scream greatness. Kohli would know that more than anyone else.
He needed another 770 runs to complete 10,000 Test runs, which is still a holy grail for batters in the longest format. His contemporaries, Joe Root of England is few runs short of completing 13,000 runs in Tests while Steve Smith has also crossed the 10,000 mark. Kane Williamson needs 724 runs and he will certainly complete the milestone as he is still in love with New
Zealand whites.